Elseworlds:  Book One
by Kal-El2k9
Summary: When Chloe is transported to an alternate version of Smallville...will Clark be able to save her?  Let me know what you think.
1. Chapter 1

Note:I do not own anything associated with Smallville, Superman, or DC Comics. I simply created this story using existing characters.

It should also be pointed out that this story takes place sometime during the last season of Smallville. Chloe knows Clark's secret. Lana and Lex are together but they are not married yet. Lois is no longer with Oliver. I'll try to add more chapters as much as I can, but I'm not sure yet how long this story will be.

Elseworlds

Chapter One

Chloe Sullivan stepped out of the taxi and paid the driver. Her pocketbook was getting a little light this close to payday, but she still gave as large a tip as she could afford. If there was one thing that she had learned since she had moved into the city, it was to always tip the cab driver generously. You never know when you're going to need that guy again.

She sighed as she looked up at the building whose shadow she was standing in. LuthorCorp in all of its glory. She had been here several times, especially since she had begun working for the Planet. A lot of the times she had found this place to be very interesting. Clark Kent had told her a hundred stories about the secrets that were being closely guarded behind these doors. But she knew that she would see no such secrets revealed today. Today, she was going to see a scientist by the name of Emil Hamilton unveil a new invention that had been highly publicized by LuthorCorp. The reason she knew that this would not be the huge story that she wanted from this facility was that Caldwell's lab was on the fifth floor. Even she knew that Lionel Luthor would keep all the best stuff way higher than that.

She walked through the glass doors into the sunlit lobby on the ground floor. A blonde woman that appeared to be only a year or two older than her smiled at her from the information desk. As Chloe stepped toward her, she pulled her press pass from her purse and clipped it on her lapel.

"My I help you?" the woman asked when Chloe had finally finished the trek across the marble floor.

"Yes," Chloe replied. "My name is Chloe Sullivan. I'm here for Professor Hamilton's press conference."

The woman tapped a few keys on her computer and stared at the monitor. After a moment she gave Chloe another smile.

"Of course, Ms. Sullivan," she said. She pointed to a row of elevators at the other end of the lobby. "Take those elevators to the fifth floor. Professor Hamilton's laboratory takes up an entire floor, so you will exit right where you need to be."

"Thank you," Chloe said.

There was an elevator open that was about to go up when Chloe reached it. She jogged inside and thanked the older man inside for holding it open for her. The elevators at LuthorCorp were extremely quick, so she was not surprised when she reached the fifth floor only seconds after the doors had pulled closed.

Chloe exited the elevator into a scientist's dream. She found herself standing in a huge warehouse-style laboratory. There was a large machine in the center of the room that looked a lot like a crane at the top, but more like a movie projector at the bottom. The crane part looked as if it housed all sorts of cables and was built so that a person could climb up there and get to all of the wires and computers more easily. It was at least twenty feet in the air and there was a catwalk that spanned the entire length of the room.

At the bottom of the massive contraption was the thing that Chloe had thought looked like a movie projector. Of course it could be argued that it looked more like some futuristic ray gun or laser canon. The end of the machine was pointed at another gadget that had a huge hole in the center of it with all sorts of lights inside of it.

Chloe looked around the room. Several reporters from various newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations were seated in an area just to the left of the cluster of machines. There was a table set up so that it was facing them. The professor was stooped over a computer terminal well away from everyone else. There was a young lady in a lab coat seated beneath him. Chloe made her way over to them.

"Professor Hamilton," Chloe said. "Hi. I'm Chloe Sullivan from the Daily Planet."

Hamilton stood up and looked at her. He smiled.

"Ms. Sullivan," he said. "Of course. Mr. Luthor told me that you would be attending."

"Lex Luthor?" Chloe asked.

"No," Hamilton replied. "Mr. Lionel Luthor. He asked me to send out the invitation to the Daily Planet and to specifically request that you represent them here today. I don't know what you've done to get into his good graces, but it certainly is paying off."

"I think that Mr. Luthor has heard about my reputation," Chloe said. "I'm sort of a sucker for the strange."

"I've heard," Hamilton said. "One of my assistants graduated from Smallville High a couple of years before you did. He's shown me issues of the Torch with some of your more interesting articles."

Chloe smiled. She hoped that the professor was not making fun of her. She could never quite tell with people of his caliber. Sometimes they were genuinely complimenting her. But more often than not, they were being facetious.

"Do you mind telling me a little about your new project?" Chloe asked.

"Not at all," Hamilton replied. "In about five minutes. That's when I'm going to demonstrate it to everyone here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few last minute adjustments to make."

The professor turned back to the computer. Chloe smiled and rolled her eyes to the press area and made her way over. She hoped that none of the other reporters had seen her get dismissed the way that she had.

"Hamilton wouldn't tell you anything either?"

Chloe turned to the voice and saw Jimmy Olsen standing there, smiling at her.

"Hi, Jimmy," Chloe said, taking a seat next to him. "You were supposed to meet me at the Planet."

"I ran out of film," Jimmy said.

"Film?" Chloe said. "Who uses film?"

"I do, occasionally," Jimmy replied. "I mean, I use digital all of the time. But my first camera was this one. A good old 35mm made by the Japanese. Sometimes I go a little nostalgic and use it."

"Whatever, Jimmy," Chloe said with a laugh. She liked Jimmy. She loved Jimmy. Which was good since they had been dating for a while now. Everyone got quiet as Professor Hamilton and two of his assistants left the bank of computer terminals on the other side of the laboratory and made their way to the table. Chloe saw that two more assistants were climbing the ladder that led to the catwalk. She guessed that there would have to be someone present up there during the demonstration.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," the professor said into the microphone. Flash bulbs began to light up and tape recorders came out into the open. "As you know, my name is Emil Hamilton. I am the leading professor of interdimensional studies, among other things, here at LuthorCorp. For the past three years, my team and I have been working with theories based around the idea of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. I will quickly try to explain what that means in layman's terms.

"Essentially, the Einstein-Rosen Bridge refers to the theory that our universe is only one of an infinite number of other universes which exist simultaneous to on another. In other words, we share our space with billions of other worlds that may or may not be identical to ours. We are separated from those other worlds only by minute phase variances encoded in our DNA.

"The project that we have been working on is a device that I call the Einstein-Rosen dephaser. It searches out the phase variances in the other universes that we co-exist with and allows us to see them."

A young man with a thin mustache in the back row stood up.

"Professor," he said. "Have you been able to actually see these other universes?"

"I have," Hamilton said. "Over the last three months my team and I have observed and catalogued over one hundred different alternate versions of our world. Some of them are so close to our own world that the only difference may be that someone over there is wearing a different color pair of socks than their counterpart over here. Others are vastly different. I will now demonstrate the device and show you a couple of the worlds that are more extravagantly different."

Hamilton and his assistants got up from the table and went to a computer terminal that was directly attached to the machine. One of the others typed in a few commands and Hamilton motioned to the men on the catwalk. After a few moments of waiting, Chloe saw that the machine with the hole in its center began to glow a faint shade of green and a soft pulsing sound began to emit from the projector. There was a blast of green light and a beam shot from the projector. The lights inside the hole seemed to catch the beam and a picture of a pretty country meadow opened up inside of it. The scene was so vivid, Chloe felt as if she could reach inside it.

"This is world number twenty-two, according to our records," Hamilton said. "This is a universe in which Metropolis was never developed. As a matter of fact, I believe that all of human civilization in that universe is at least two hundred years behind our own. My readings suggest that there is no human life within a hundred miles of where we are now." He tapped a few keys and another burst of light came from the projector. Now the scene was just as it would be outside of LuthorCorp in their own world, except that the entire city was covered in a hundred feet of water.

"What are we seeing now, Professor?" another reporter asked. Chloe could see that it was Cat Stevens, an intern for one of the television stations.

"This is world number seventy-four," Hamilton replied. "As you can see, Metropolis was destroyed some time ago by a massive tsunami, along with most of the eastern half of the country."

"Professor Hamilton," a man sitting a few seats down from Chloe and Jimmy called out. "I've been reading your papers on this project for years. Up until about eighteen months ago you were unable to get your machine to do more than give you a few seconds of fuzzy images. What caused you to have such a remarkable breakthrough?"

Hamilton pointed to the projector. "Do you see the green glow being emitted from the device?" There were nods all around. "That glow is coming from a large piece of one of the meteors that crashed in our neighboring town of Smallville several years ago."

"What?" Chloe yelled. She stood up, full of confusion and disbelief.

"Chloe," Jimmy said. "What's your deal?"

Hamilton looked at her. "Is there a problem, Ms. Sullivan?"

"Yes," Chloe said. "The meteor rocks in Smallville are extremely unstable. What about the reports of mutations that stems from those rocks?"

"None of those have been substantiated," Hamilton said. "Ms. Sullivan, I know that you have written many stories about the strange effects of meteor rock radiation. But, as a scientist for more than fifteen years, let me assure you than those are nothing more than science fiction tales."

"Science fiction my ass," Chloe muttered as she sat back down. Jimmy glared at her.

"I think that old Smallville paranoia is coming through," he said.

"Jimmy," Chloe said. "You know those rocks are bad news. You've seen what they can do. I've been trying for years to prove that LuthorCorp has been experimenting with them. And now, their holding a press conference to admit to it."

"You've been trying to prove that they're intentionally creating human meteor freaks," Jimmy said. "That's not what they're doing here."

"Professor Hamilton," one of the assistants on the catwalk called down. "The emitter is overheating. We need to shut it off and readjust."

"Alright," Hamilton said. "Do it." He turned back to the press. "We need a few minutes to do some small adjustments. Please, stay where you are. I want to show you a few more of these alternate universes before we dismiss."

Almost before he had gotten those words from his mouth, there was a loud bang, as if a bomb had gone off. A piece of the projector blew off of the back of it and shot across the room. It slammed into the elevator panel, sending sparks flying from the wall.

"Oh, god!" Jimmy yelled. "We can't get out!"

Chloe looked at the machine. The projector was now firing its beam sporadically, changing the picture with each shot.

"That thing is going crazy!" she said. "We have to stop it!"

"Chloe," Jimmy screamed. "Don't worry about that thing! We've got to get out of here!"

Chloe cursed under her breath. _Nothing good ever came with a meteor rock,_ she thought. Then she amended her own thoughts. _Except Clark, of course._

Another piece of the machine blew apart, sending projectiles flying. One of them hit a support underneath the catwalk and part of it came down, crashing into the floor and blocking everyone in the room from getting past it. The two men above them fell when it happened. They were both now moaning in pain, but they were alive. Chloe figured that they had broken something in the fall.

"Professor," Chloe yelled. Hamilton looked up from the projector where he was trying to find a way to shut it off. "Can't you just shut down the power?"

"The emergency shut off is next to the elevators," Hamilton said. "We can't get to it. And the fire escape is blocked, too."

"We need to pull the fire alarm," Chloe said. "That will send us some help!"

"It's over there!" Hamilton said, pointing. Chloe followed where he was gesturing. The handle for the fire alarm was about twenty feet on the other side of the fallen section of catwalk. "There is another one at the top of the catwalk. I had it installed when the rig was complete." The only way to get to it would be to climb the section on the floor to the ladder and climb it to the top.

Jimmy shook his head. "It's too dangerous," he said. "That whole section will come down if anyone puts any weight on it at all."

"Someone has to try," Chloe said. "I'll do it."

Before Jimmy could say anything she had already climbed on top of the fallen section and was slowly making her way to the ladder. She would liked to have thought that she now knew what Clark felt like every time he had to play hero. But she did not have any super powers to fall back on. All he would have had to do would be to shoot some heat vision at the sprinkler system and viola…fire alarms.

"Chloe!" Jimmy yelled. "What the hell is the matter with you?"

"I'm fine, Jimmy," she said. She had made her way to the ladder and was now slowly climbing it to the top. She looked down and saw several of the photographers and TV cameramen inching closer to the projector. They were trying to get a picture of it as it continued to fire off random beams, continuously changing the image in front of it. "Hey!" she yelled. "Get away from that thing!"

There was loud pop and the ladder lurched downward a few inches. Chloe held on tight until it stopped and then continued her ascent.

"Professor Hamilton," Jimmy said. "If she gets hurt, I'm coming for you."

"Do be quiet, Mr. Olsen," Hamilton said.

Chloe reached the catwalk and stood up slowly. The entire rig shook with every step she took. She walked slowly to the end, not even realizing that she was holding her breath until she began to feel lightheaded. When she finally got there, she reached out and grabbed hold of the fire alarm mounted to the wall. Instantly, the sound of bells filled the air and the sprinklers came to life, soaking the press and the scientists below.

"Alright Chloe!" Jimmy yelled. Chloe turned to smile at him when she felt the rig beneath her jolt again. This time the bolts finally gave way and the whole thing came crashing down. She screamed and jumped off of the falling metal just before it hit the floor. She hit the ground hard, feeling a sharp pain in her wrist. She rolled to a stop and slowly got up, clutching her arm. She looked up to see Jimmy and Professor Hamilton running toward her. She also noticed that she was standing directly between the firing end of the projector and the machine that displayed the images.

"Oh, crap!" she yelled as a bright burst of green light filled her vision.

That's it for chapter one. Don't worry. You all know good and well what happened to Chloe. So tune in next time for an alternate version of Smallville.


	2. Chapter 2

Alright. I'm back with the next chapter. I have to tell you that I'm writing chapter 2 only about an hour after I posted chapter 1. So I haven't seen any reviews yet. That's assuming that someone will leave one. I hope everybody likes it so far. This is my first fic on this site, so be gentle.

Elseworlds: Book One

Chapter 2

The blast from the projector knocked Chloe off of her feet and sent her sailing through the air. She crashed into the machine behind her. Her head was spinning. She could hear screams and sensed people rushing all around her. She opened her eyes in time to see a lot of blurry images swim around her before everything went black.

When she finally came to, she found herself lying in a hospital bed. Her clothes were folded neatly on a chair on the other side of the room. Outside her window she could see doctors and nurses and other people walking back and forth. She looked down at herself. Her arm was in a cast. She had a bandage on her head from where she had been flung backward. And there was another one under her gown on her chest. She guessed she had been burned by the projector. She knew that she was really lucky to be alive.

She pulled her blanket back up when she heard someone knock on the door. She could not see through the window well enough to tell who it was.

"Come in," she said.

The door opened and her cousin, Lois, came inside. She was carrying a bag of clothes.

"Hi, Chloe," Lois said. "I came as soon as they called me."

"As soon as who called you?" Chloe asked.

"Someone from LuthorCorp called me at the coffee shop," she replied. "They said that there had been an accident and that you were found unconscious. What were you doing there, anyway?"

"I was there for a press conference," Chloe said. She was confused. "Why are you asking?"

"Well," Lois replied. "I guess I didn't know that you were into science and stuff."

"The Planet sent me," Chloe said.

Lois sat the bag on the bed and sighed. "So that's what's going on. You got hold of some bad drugs or something and now you think that the planet is telling you to do things."

"No, I don't think the planet is telling me to do things, Lois," Chloe said. "I mean that I was sent to the press conference by the Daily Planet. The newspaper that I work for."

Lois just stared at her.

"God," she said.

"What's the matter?" Chloe asked.

"Well," Lois said. "Either you've lost your mind or you hit your head a lot harder than the doctors thought that you did."

"I don't like where this conversation is going," Chloe said. "What are you saying?"

"You don't work for any newspaper, Chlo," Lois said. "You used to write a lot of dark poetry, but you haven't done that for a while. You work with me at the coffee shop."

"What?" Chloe asked. She got out of the bed, swooning for a moment from the sudden dizziness. She grabbed the clothes that Lois had brought and started to put them on. She unfolded them and saw that she had brought black denim shorts with fishnet stockings and a black t-shirt that was cut of at the rib line. "What is this?"

"That's your favorite outfit," Lois said. "Or at least it was the last time that I saw you. I guess it's been a couple of weeks." Chloe looked at her in disbelief. "By the way, when did you decide to go blonde?"

"Lois," Chloe said. "Something is going on here. Where's Jimmy? He was there. He'll know what happened."

"Jimmy?" Lois asked.

"Jimmy Olsen!" Chloe yelled. "My boyfriend!"

"Jimmy Olsen?" Lois repeated. "I've never heard you say that name in my life."

"I don't work for the Planet," Chloe said. "I'm not dating Jimmy. Why is everything so different?" She sat back down on the bed. When it dawned on her, her eyes widened as much as they could. "The projector! The blast from the projector must have sent me into a parallel universe!"

"What?" Lois asked.

"Lois," Chloe said. "I was at a press conference where Professor Emil Hamilton was showing off a new gadget that could let you observe a parallel universe. It's kind of like a window into another dimension."

"Okay," Lois said, as if she could get lost at any second.

"The device used meteor rocks," Chloe said. "I got hit by the beam. The meteor rock must have caused it to send me to an alternate reality. I'm in another dimension."

"Okay," Lois said. "I've heard you tell weird stories about those rocks, but I though that you gave all of that up."

"This is serious, Lois!" she yelled. "I'm not making this up! I'm in another dimension. I've got to go back to LuthorCorp and get Hamilton to send me home." Chloe started to put on the clothes that Lois had brought her when her cousin came to stand right in front of her.

"Hold on, Chlo," she said. "You're talking crazy. I know as well as anyone else that there is a lot of strange stuff that happens in Smallville and Metropolis, but parallel worlds and other dimensions is going a little far. Even for you."

"You're not going to help me," Chloe said. "Are you?"

"Not unless you admit that maybe that little bump on your head could be what's making you say all of this," Lois replied. "My god, Chlo! All of a sudden you have a whole lifetime of new memories and you don't remember anything that's actually happened!"

"Why don't you get it?" Chloe said. "The Chloe that you know is not me! I don't work at the Talon! I don't wear fishnet stockings! I don't write dark poetry!"

"Right," Lois said. "Instead, you're a reporter in Metropolis. Come on, Chloe. You barely got through English class in high school."

Chloe stared at her. She had to make Lois see the truth. Lois had ways about her that could make it fairly easy to persuade the version of Professor Hamilton that resided here to help her. But she could only use those ways if she could first convince Lois that what she was saying was true.

"Where am I?" Chloe asked.

"What do you mean?" Lois replied.

"Just suppose for a second that I am who I say that I am," Chloe said. "That means that there are two of me in this world. There's the me that's sitting here talking to you, and then there's the me that's dressed all in black and getting ready to cast a spell or something. So, where is the me that is supposed to be here?"

Lois thought for a minute. "Your shift starts at two."

Chloe looked at the clock. It was one-forty. Smallville was at least an hour's drive from Metropolis.

"Okay," she said. "Here's the deal. You're going to drive me back to Smallville. We're going to go to the Talon. If there is another version of me working there…"

"Then I will believe you," Lois said.

"And you'll help me get Hamilton to send me back?" Chloe asked.

"Yes," Lois replied.

Chloe was surprised to find that the version of Lois that lived in this universe did not drive a sports car. She found herself being hurtled down the freeway in a pickup that was at least ten years old. She opened the glove box to find a stack of country music CDs.

"I am definitely not in Kansas anymore," Chloe said.

"Of course you are," Lois said. "You're still in Kansas, no matter what dimension you're in."

"It's a figure of speech," Chloe replied. "What happened to your car?"

"This is my car," Lois said.

"Yeah," Chloe said. "But you used to drive a shiny sports car."

"Like I can afford that working at the Talon," Lois replied.

"You don't get money from your dad?" Chloe asked. Lois shot her a mean glance.

"That's not funny, Chlo," she said.

"What?"

"You know my dad died in Iraq last year," Lois said.

"No, Lois," Chloe said. "I didn't. That's what I'm trying to tell you." They sat in silence for a few minutes. "I'm sorry about your dad."

"Whatever," Lois replied.

Silence again. The truck rolled past the sign that said "Welcome To Smallville", but Chloe noticed that the population listed was at least twice what it should be. And then she noticed the shopping centers and gas stations along the side of the highway where there should have been nothing but open farmland.

"What happened to all the farms?" Chloe asked.

"Farms?" Lois repeated. "Smallville hasn't been a farming town for years, Chlo."

"It hasn't?" Chloe replied.

"No," Lois said. "LuthorCorp bought most of the farms over a decade ago. Smallville is more of a stopping point on the way to Metropolis now. A lot of the big corporations over there have satellite facilities here. The Kents are the only farming family left out here. And they're not really doing all that well."

"The Kents?" Chloe asked. "Jonathan Kent is alive?"

"Of course he is," Lois said. "That's a weird question."

"He died in my world," Chloe said. "He had a heart attack the same night that he was elected senator."

"Senator Jonathan Kent?" Lois asked. "Not likely."

Chloe looked out the window as they passed the high school. They would arrive at the Talon in just a couple of minutes.

"It's so different," Chloe said.

"What do you mean?" Lois asked.

"Well, I'm not a scientist," Chloe replied. "But I remember reading some stuff about alternate dimension theory and the Einstein-Rosen Bridge when I was doing my research for The Torch in high school."

"The Einstein…what?" Lois asked.

"The Einstein-Rosen Bridge," Chloe said. "It's a theory about parallel dimensions and how they're connected. Supposedly, each universe is the same to a point where a decision or an even plays out differently. That spawns a new world."

"Oh," Lois said. "I see what you're saying. You want to know what happened in this world that made it so much different than your's."

"Right," Chloe replied.

"I still think you're crazy," Lois said.

Chloe motioned to the Talon as Lois pulled up to the curb. "We're about to find out."

They got out of the car and walked over to the front door. Lois started to go inside, but Chloe put her hand on her arm.

"Wait," she said. "Maybe I should stay out here."

"Why?" Lois asked.

"Well," Chloe replied. "If I'm right and I've got a doppelganger in there, then that could cause us some unwanted attention."

"I could tell people that you're our cousin," Lois said. "It'd be like a Patty Duke thing."

"I guess that could work," Chloe said.

Lois opened the door and they went inside. The Talon looked the same as it did every other time that Chloe had been there. There were people sitting at tables all around the room, drinking coffee and talking. It seemed to be just the way it should be. All the way down the girl standing behind the counter.

"That's Lana," Chloe said. "Lana Lang still works here?"

"Of course she still works here," Lois said. "She's been the manager since it opened. She wouldn't go anywhere now. She got a big raise when Lionel Luthor bought the place."

Lois and Chloe stepped up to the counter. Lana looked up from the tray of dishes that she had just set down and smiled. Then her smiled turned to a puzzled stare as she looked at Chloe.

"Chloe?" Lana said. "I just saw you in the storeroom."

Lois whirled around and glared at Chloe in amazement. Chloe just gave her a look that obviously said "I told you so".

"Uh," Lois started. "Lana, this is Patty. She a distant cousin of Chloe's and mine. She just came into town to visit and I wanted to show her where we work."

Lana smiled again. "Oh. Well, welcome to the Talon, Patty. I've got to tell you…you look amazingly like Chloe. Except for the hair, of course. You even dress like her."

Chloe looked down at the smutty outfit that she was wearing and sighed. "Thank you, Lana."

"What happened to your arm?" Lana asked.

She had nearly forgotten about her arm. "I broke my wrist," she said. "I fell."

Just then, a dark-haired girl with heavy mascara walked in from the back room. Chloe stared at her in disbelief. The girl's clothes were a lot like the ones she had on, except that she was wearing dark pantyhose instead of fishnets. Her makeup and hair were completely different from her own. But her face was identical.

"Chloe," Lana said to the new girl. "I was just meeting your cousin."

"Cousin?" the other Chloe said in a mocking tone of voice. She eyed Chloe up and down and scowled. Obviously, this version of herself had a huge grudge against everyone.

"Yeah, Chlo," Lois said. "You remember our cousin, Patty."

"No," the other Chloe said.

"Well, I think that we have some serious catching up to do," Lois said. "Lana, do you mind if Chloe takes her break now?"

"Not at all," Lana said. "Take as long as you like. I've got everything covered."

"Okay," Lois said, grabbing the dark Chloe by the arm and dragging her toward the door. "Come on, Chloe." All three of them left, leaving Lana looking suspicious for a few moments. Then she decided that it was just another day in Smallville and poured another cup of coffee for a customer.

"We're telling you the truth, Chloe," Lois was saying. She had just finished going over the whole story as she understood it to the version of Chloe from this world. "I don't understand everything about this, and neither does she. But she's not lying. We have to help her."

"You help her," the new Chloe said. "I don't do that kind of stuff anymore."

Chloe was struck by that statement. Could it be that this copy of herself was the same person on the inside as she was? That something had happened to this girl to make her become so calloused and cynical?

"Look," Chloe started. "You don't know me. You don't have any reason to believe me. And if you guys don't help me, it won't affect your lives one bit. All I know is that you're another version of me. And I have to believe that at some point in the past, we were the same person. I know that I would go out of my way to help someone when they needed it. And, Lois, you're one of my closest friends back home. I know that you would help me if you could."

"This guy at LuthorCorp," the other Chloe replied. "His name is Hamilton?"

"That's right," Chloe said. "Emil Hamilton."

"We'll see what we can do," the other Chloe said. "But I don't know where to start."

"Well," Lois said. "If you want to get something from LuthorCorp, you might as well go to a Luthor." She pointed down the street. "And here comes one now."

Chloe turned and faced in the direction that Lois was pointing. About a block away, heading toward them at a slow and cool pace, was a young man with wavy brown hair dressed in a very expensive silk suit.

"That's not a Luthor," Chloe said. "That's a very sharp dressed Clark Kent."

"Clark Kent?" Lois said. "Chloe, I don't know that much about the world that you're from. But I've never heard of anyone by that name. That guy is Lucas Luthor."

Chloe stared in disbelief and swallowed hard. Things in this world were getting more and more different by the minute.

That's it for chapter 2 guys. I hope you're enjoying the story so far. You guys have sent me a couple of really great comments. Please let me know if I screw up anything that deals with the canon of the show. I want to be as close as possible.

This chapter wasn't as good as the last one, but it's going to pick up. I look to write another chapter or two introducing the differences in the two universes. After that there may be a couple of flashbacks unless I can figure out how to show some of the background of my parallel characters another way.

It will be a few days before I get chapter 3 posted. I'm only able to do this at work and I have a three day weekend coming up.

Thanks for reading, guys. And keep sending those comments. I love it when people tell me what they think. It motivates me to tell more of the story.

Kal-El2k7


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

"That's not Clark Kent?" Chloe asked.

"I don't know the Kents very well," the alternate Chloe said. "But I do know that there aren't any of them named Clark."

"Yeah, Chlo," Lois said. "That's Lucas Luthor. His father is Lionel Luthor."

Chloe closed her eyes. This was getting very confusing.

"In my world, Lex Luthor is the son of Lionel," she said.

"Another fictional person," the other Chloe said with a roll of her eyes.

"Good afternoon, ladies," Lucas Luthor said as he approached. Once he got this close Chloe could see for certain that she had been right. This was Clark's counterpart in this universe. Only here he was a Luthor. What in the world could have happened in the past to make such a drastic difference?

Then something else struck her. For years Lex Luthor had been seen in Smallville as a good man. He was almost a saint with all of the money that he put into the community. But she and Clark had slowly learned the truth about him. He was evil. And they were very suspicious that he was creating an army of meteor freaks in a secret lab at LuthorCorp.

But as evil as he was, how much worse would Lex Luthor be if he had been granted powers that Clark held. If the last son of Krypton had been raised by the man that had raised the Lex of her world…

She hoped that she was wrong.

"Hi, handsome," Lois said.

Chloe was astonished by the flirtatious attitude that Lois took with Lucas. She was even more astonished when she saw her own alternate self grab him by his tie and pull him into a passionate kiss.

"Are they…?" she started.

"Sorry," Lois whispered. "I should have mentioned that you kind of have a thing for men with power. That one in particular."

Chloe stared. She had always had a thing for Clark. And now to see herself kissing him so enthusiastically, and having that kiss returned, was making her blush. She just kept thinking _ilovejimmyilovejimmyilovejimmy_.

Finally, the two of them separated. Lucas smiled at her and then turned to the other two ladies in front of him. He stopped when he saw Chloe. He looked from her back to her duplicate.

"Confused?" Lois asked. "Are you sure that you kissed the right one?"

Lucas smiled. "No. I'd know those lips anywhere." He held his hand out to Chloe. "Lucas Luthor."

Chloe took his hand. "Patty," she said as his kissed her knuckles. "Patty Lane."

"Patty's our cousin," Lois explained.

"The resemblance between Chloe and yourself is remarkable," Lucas said. "You could be twins."

"Or the same person," the other Chloe said with a sarcastic grin directed at her other self.

"I suppose," Lucas said. "I'd love to stay and talk ladies. But, I have some business to take care of with Ms. Lang and then I have to go to Metropolis to meet with my father."

"You're going to Metropolis?" Chloe asked. She turned to Lois. "He's going to Metropolis."

Lois looked at Lucas. "Do you think that we could go with you?"

"Why do you girls need to go to Metropolis?" Lucas asked.

Chloe thought fast. "I need to see Professor Hamilton," she said. "He's interviewing me about an internship."

"Professor Hamilton," Lucas repeated. "Emil Hamilton?"

"Yeah," Chloe said. "He has a huge lab on the fifth floor." 

"Oh, I know who he is," Lucas replied. "He was developing some kind of tool for studying other dimensions or something. But there was an accident in his lab this morning and someone got hurt. My father fired him."

Chloe's heart sank. "Do you know of any way that I can reach him?"

"No, Patty," Lucas said. "I'm sorry. I suppose you could look him up if he's listed. I really have to go now." He turned to the alternate Chloe and gave her a somewhat less extensive kiss before heading into the Talon.

"Don't lose your mind yet, Chloe," Lois said. "Just because he's not at LuthorCorp anymore doesn't mean that we can't find him."

"Lois," Chloe started. "It's not a question anymore of our getting to him at LuthorCorp. Now I have to find him and get him and myself in there. And that's assuming that he's willing to help me."

The other Chloe looked at her watch. "I have to get back inside. It's getting late, guys. We're not going to be able to find this Hamilton guy today anyway."

"Yeah," Lois agreed. "Why don't you come to our place tonight and spend the night? We'll draw up a plan and head to Metropolis in the morning."

"I guess so," she said as the other Chloe turned to go into the coffee shop. "I'll go with you. I need to use the restroom."

"Whatever," the other Chloe said.

The two Chloes went back into the Talon. The dark haired version went to the counter, which Lana had evidently abandoned. The blonde one headed toward the restroom. When she passed the office she paused at the sound of raised voices inside.

"Lucas," Lana was saying. "You can't do this to us!"

"I'm not doing anything, Lana," Lucas replied. "This place is not making any money."

"We're not making as much money as we used to because you and your father opened a strip mall a half mile away," Lana said. "There're three restaurants and a book store with a coffee shop in it. Why would you try to compete against your own business?" She paused. "Unless you've been planning to close the Talon all along."

"Now why would I want to do that?" he asked.

"I don't know," Lana replied. "Ask your father."

"My father may be the majority stockholder in LuthorCorp," Lucas said. "He may have Metropolis in his back pocket. But don't be fooled, Lana. Smallville belongs to me!"

Chloe had only heard Clark this angry a few times. And he had never heard him speak to Lana like that. She was beginning to feel that her suspicions about Lucas' father's influence over him were correct."

"So just like that you're going to close the Talon," Lana said. "Some of the friends that you've had for years will be without a job. Your own girlfriend will be out of a job."

"There are a lot of jobs available in this town," Lucas said. "And as for Chloe, I'll take care of her. You know that. I took care of you once upon a time."

"Yes," Lana said. "You did take care of me. You took very good care of me and I loved you very much. Until the day that I realized that you could never love another human being as much as you love your money and your power. You're so crazed with your quest to take over LuthorCorp that it isn't even funny."

Lucas' voice came closer to the door and Chloe edged away from it.

"The Talon will close in thirty days, Ms. Lang," he said. "The building will be torn down and a parking deck will stand on this spot in six months. I suggest you and Lois start packing your things and find other employment. I'll be happy to provide you with references if you require them." With that, the door opened and Lucas Luthor emerged. He did not notice Chloe as he turned and headed for the door. She saw him stop and speak to her double on his way out. And she could hear the quiet sighs of her friend still inside the office.

The moaning coming from the other room was too much to bear.

"Does that not bother you?" Chloe asked.

Lois looked up from the magazine that she had been reading, looked to the door leading the other Chloe's bedroom, and chuckled.

"It sounds like that every night," she said. "You have to get used to it."

"You don't understand," Chloe said. "Lucas is the duplicate of Clark Kent in my world. He's a guy that I have had feelings for my entire life. Now, I'm sitting here listening to my own screams as he makes love to me in another room. It's freaking me out."

"Do you want to leave?" Lois asked. "We could go out and come back later. But they have known to go at it all night."

"No," Chloe replied. "I'll just cover my head with a pillow and try to get some sleep."

"Did you call information to try and find out where Hamilton lives?" Lois asked.

"Yeah," she replied. "He's not listed. But I found an article about him on the Daily Planet's website from a year ago. It says that he lives at Grande View Estates."

"Another place owned by Lionel Luthor," Lois said.

"Let's hope we can get to him before he gets evicted."

Lois got up from the sofa that she had been lounging on and came over to sit on the edge of the cot that had been set up for Chloe to sleep on.

"Chlo," she said. "Have you asked yourself what you will do if Hamilton won't help you? Or even if he will but we can't get him back to his lab? There is a chance that Luthor has already had all of his equipment scrapped."

"Yeah, I've thought about it, Lois," she said. "The only thing that I can hope for is that he can recreate his own work. He's been experimenting with his equipment for years. He has to be able to build another projector."

"But even you said that the projector was built for looking into other dimensions," Lois said. "It was never intended to actually transport a person or a thing to another world."

"It had to be the meteor rock," Chloe said. "Hamilton wasn't able to get the thing to work right until he started using a meteor rock to funnel the energy. That has to be the x factor that turned it from a viewing tool to a transporter."

"Well," Lois said. "I'm going to bed. We'll go to Metropolis in the morning. We'll go to Grande View and find Hamilton. Then you and Thing Two in there can put your identical heads together and get him into LuthorCorp."

"Assuming that he agrees to help us," Chloe said.

Lois asked. "I just hope that we can come up with a better strategy than asking him if he'll please blast my cousin with his weird meteor laser canon."

Lois trotted into her bedroom and closed the door. Chloe turned toward the wall and covered her head with a pillow. She was trying to drown out the sound of the bed in the other room which was now knocking against the wall with a steady rhythm. Somehow she finally dropped off to sleep.

She woke up sometime in the night. She did not have a watch or a clock to see what time it was. A noise had awakened her and she sat up to find its source. She saw Clark, or Lucas, standing at the refrigerator wearing a black woman's robe that only came down to his thighs and drinking out of the milk carton. He put the carton down and looked at her.

"I didn't mean to wake you, Ms. Lane," he said.

"It's alright," she replied. "I wanted to catch the end of the show anyway."

"Show?" he asked. She glanced at the bedroom door and he smiled. "Oh. I see. I'm sorry if we kept you from falling asleep."

"Again," she said. "It's alright."

"I try to get Chloe to come and stay with me at the mansion," Lucas said. "But she's so proud of her independence that she won't have any of it. I could give her anything that she wants and she would never again have to work."

"She wants to make it on her own," Chloe said. "We're a lot alike in that respect."

"Well, I know that she'll be a success in anything that she does with her life," he said.

"As long as she doesn't want to work at the Talon," Chloe added. "Right?" Lucas looked at her with a puzzled expression. "I overheard you talking to Lana today."

"Ah," Lucas said. "I doubt that she's mentioned it to Chloe and Lois."

"I guess not," Chloe said. "You know, Mr. Luthor…"

"Call me Lucas," he said.

"Okay, Lucas," she said. "Back home there is a man that has about as much wealth and power as you do. He put his money ahead of his friends, and he's nearly lost them all."

"Well, I'd like to say that I don't care about money," Lucas said. "But then again…I'm only human."

Chloe laughed. "Human. Right." It was a bold statement. But she was sure that if the Clark of her world could trust her to know his secret, then surely his double could. Especially since he had just finished making love to her own double for hours.

Lucas eyed Chloe intently as he casually stepped toward her.

"What are you saying, Ms. Lane?" he asked.

"Nothing," Chloe said. "It's just that you remind me of someone from back home. Someone with a lot of secrets."

"What kind of secrets?" Lucas asked.

"How long have you lived in Smallville?" Chloe asked.

"I've been in and out of town my entire life," Lucas said. "I've been a resident for about six years."

"A lot of people who live here that long tend to pick up some abilities due to their exposure to the meteor rocks scattered around the area."

Lucas sat down on the couch and faced her.

"I stay away from meteor rocks," he said. "They make me ill."

"I know they do," Chloe said. "I also know that you're not like other people."

"Ms. Lane," Lucas said. "I don't know if you actually know anything about me or if you're just making things up to play some sort of game. But I have spent my life hiding some things about myself and searching for some answers. I will do anything to cover my secrets and solve them at the same time."

Chloe shuddered at the chill in his voice. She thought that perhaps this conversation was not as brilliant a plan as she had thought. The look in Lucas' eyes did not mirror the look of Clark Kent. She saw a whole lot more Lex Luthor there than she was comfortable with.

"I'm sorry, Lucas," she said. "I was mistaken. Good night."

She lay down and turned away from him. She could still feel him staring at her for several minutes before she finally heard the door to the bedroom close. She would not be sleeping anymore tonight.

She was afraid that she had awakened a sleeping dragon. She had to find Professor Hamilton and get home before it was too late.

That'll do it for chapter three. I got finished with it quicker than I thought that I would. But chapter four will definitely be delayed until next week.

A note about the next chapter. I may continue showing what's going on with Chloe, but I'm definitely coming back to our dimension to show what happened with Jimmy after she disappeared. Here's a hint. He's going to have to call in CK for backup. Also, I'm going to start working out a couple of flashbacks to explain how Clark became a Luthor in the mirror universe.

And yes, I remember that I said that Jonathan Kent was still alive in the mirror universe. We will be visiting him and his family in the next few chapters. There's quite a surprise coming up there as well.

You guys are sending some great comments. I really appreciate them. MysticWolf1 and Shiann Reece…you seem to be enjoying the story the most. I like that. Keep sending those comments. And I don't mind if you give me some ideas about what you think should be different in the mirror universe. And remember…this is Elseworlds: Book One…when its all done I've still got a Book Two tucked away in my brain.

See ya,

Kal-El2k7


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

"Alright Chloe!" Jimmy yelled. Chloe turned to smile at him when she felt the rig beneath her jolt again. This time the bolts finally gave way and the whole thing came crashing down. She screamed and jumped off of the falling metal just before it hit the floor. She hit the ground hard, feeling a sharp pain in her wrist. She rolled to a stop and slowly got up, clutching her arm. She looked up to see Jimmy and Professor Hamilton running toward her. She also noticed that she was standing directly between the firing end of the projector and the machine that displayed the images.

"Oh, crap!" she yelled as a bright burst of green light filled her vision.

Jimmy looked on in horror as the beam shot from the end of the projector and hit Chloe square in the chest. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the energy swept across her body. It almost looked as if she was burning into nothing from the inside out. Within an instant, she was completely gone.

"Chloe!" he screamed, still running to the spot where she had just been standing. Several pairs of arms grabbed him and pulled him back.

"Mr. Olsen!" Professor Hamilton said. "Don't go any closer. It could happen to you as well."

"You killed her!" Jimmy yelled. "You killed my girlfriend!"

Hamilton sighed and looked on helplessly as the projector continued to fire at the cylinder. There was an image of Metropolis as it normally appeared, only with dragons flying in the skies. Now he could see the city as if it were two hundred years in the future.

"Security just called, sir," one of the professor's assistants said. "They're shutting off the power to the entire floor."

He continued to watch the ever changing picture until it finally stopped and all of the lights went out. Slowly, the soft glow of the auxiliary lights came up enough for him to see his surroundings.

"Mr. Olsen," Hamilton said. "I'm truly sorry."

"Tell that to Chloe," Jimmy said. "She's been researching those rocks for years. There's never been a story of any of them doing anything good. They destroy everything that they come into contact with. And now one of them has killed her."

The fire escape doors opened and a security team came into the room. After a few minutes they had cleared enough of the debris of the catwalk that the reporters and assistants were able to be evacuated. Hamilton helped Jimmy to his feet.

"Professor Hamilton," one of the security guards said. "You and Mr. Olsen will have to follow us to the lobby. EMS is en route."

"We're coming," the professor said. "Oh. And have someone contact Mr. Luthor. There has been a fatal accident."

"More like a murder!" Jimmy said.

"I believe Mr. Luthor is already on his way down, sir," the guard said before he left.

"Mr. Olsen," Hamilton said. "I assure you that every precaution was made to ensure that nothing like this would happen."

"But it did," Jimmy said. "You killed her! She was a sweet and innocent girl and you killed her trying to get into the limelight. Well, I'll tell you what, Doc. I work for one of the biggest newspapers in the world. I'm going to make sure that everyone knows what happened here today."

"Well that would be unfortunate for you," came a voice from behind Jimmy. He turned around and saw Lionel Luthor standing in the doorway to the fire escape.

"Mr. Luthor," Hamilton said, making his way across the room to greet the man. "There has been a terrible accident!"

"I'll deal with you in a minute, Emil," Luthor said. He turned to Jimmy. "You're Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet. Correct?"

"Yeah," Jimmy said. "You're Lionel Luthor."

"Very good," Luthor said. "You are evidently a very bright young man. I hope, then, that you will not find any difficulty in comprehending what I am about to tell you. If a word of what happened here today makes it into your newspaper, there will be consequences."

"You can't threaten me," Jimmy said. "There were twenty other reporters in here today. Are you going to kill all of them, too?"

"Every other press person in this city has enough sense not to cross me," Luthor said. "Ask around. And by the way, I never said that I would kill you. You may go."

"Chloe Sullivan is dead," Jimmy said. "Somebody is going to answer for it."

"Oh, you're absolutely right," Luthor said. "Someone will answer for it right now." He turned to Hamilton as Jimmy went out the fire escape door.

"Mr. Luthor," Hamilton said. "This wasn't my fault."

"What happened here?" Luthor said, stepping closer to the professor.

"There must have been some sort of power surge," Hamilton replied. "The projector started blowing apart. Then the catwalk came down and somehow Ms. Sullivan got hit with the projector beam."

"And it killed her?" Luthor asked. "I thought that it was nothing more than light."

"It was, sir," Hamilton explained. "At least it was in the early stages of the experiment."

"What changed?" Luthor asked.

"The introduction of a piece of one the Smallville meteors," Hamilton said. "It must have changed the experiment more than I anticipated."

"Professor," Luthor said. "The pieces of meteor that hit Smallville are extremely unstable. I've been having them sampled and researched for years. We still don't know what it is that makes them so unique, but we do know that when they are introduced…they change everything. And so now you tell me that one of these meteor rocks turned a harmless projector into a fatal weapon?"

"I'm not entirely certain, sir," Hamilton said. "There shouldn't have been anything about the device that could cause destruction. I think that it is more likely that Ms. Sullivan's DNA was pulled apart by the beam and projected into the image."

"So you think that she could still be alive?" Luthor asked.

"It's possible, sir," Hamilton said.

"Well, then where is she?"

Hamilton sighed and looked down. "Well, sir. Either her DNA was separated and scattered across the entire multiverse, or it was reconstructed in one parallel world."

"So she's either as good as dead or she's in another dimension," Luthor said. "Well, Professor, you have work to do. I want you to put your machine back together and find Ms. Sullivan. If she's dead, then you will be fired, your career will essentially be over, and your life will be worthless. If she is alive then you will have discovered a way to not only view other worlds but also to visit them. You will make my company a lot of money and you will possibly win the Nobel Prize. I will check on your progress."

And without another word Lionel Luthor turned on his heel and marched out of the laboratory, leaving Professor Hamilton standing speechless in the ruins of his greatest invention.

Clark Kent was busy putting new fence posts in the ground on the back side of his family's farm. It was the kind of work that he was used to doing as long as he could remember. His father had begun letting him do some of the chores like than when he was only about seven or eight. The same job that would have taken his father hours to do with a post hole digger and a shovel only took Clark a fraction of the time. All Clark had to do was pick up the post and shove it into the ground. It was as easy as if a normal person were to put toothpicks in their mashed potatoes.

He still could not explain the source of his abilities. He knew that he was from another planet and that the radiation given off by the Earth's sun had changed his physiology. But he still could not get his head around every aspect of it. He was learning though. Just as his body and his superhuman abilities had grown over time, he knew that his superhuman brain would eventually develop as well.

"Clark!"

He looked up and saw his mother standing on the porch of their old farmhouse waving at him. He allowed his eyes to focus more, using what he only knew to refer to as telescopic vision, and saw that she had a slightly worried expression. He took off in a run to the house. He moved so fast that the human eye would only be able to see that he vanished from where he was and instantly appeared again next to his mother. He had run over a quarter of a mile and was not even winded.

"What's wrong, Mom?" he asked. She turned to him. She had been looking where he was out in the field.

"Jimmy Olsen is on the phone," she said. "He sounds really upset about something."

Clark stepped into the house and picked the telephone up from the desk where his mother had set it. He had a feeling sweep through him. It was the same feeling that he always got before something bad happened. It was almost as if he had a sixth sense about trouble, especially when it involved the people that were the closest to him.

"Jimmy?" Clark said into the phone. "What's the matter?"

"CK!" Jimmy said. Clark winced at the panicked excitement in his voice. "It's Chloe! There was an accident at a press conference! She got zapped! Lionel Luthor threatened me! I don't know what to do!"

"Slow down," Clark said calmly. "What about Chloe?"

"She's dead," Jimmy said. Clark's heart sank. He knew that there had been many times that he had feared that his friends were dead and everything turned out to be okay. But it still always hurt as if it were true.

"What do you mean?" Clark asked. "What happened?"

Jimmy quickly recounted as much of the tale as he could to get the jest of it across to Clark. Finally, Clark told him that he would be there as quick as he could. Little did Jimmy know how quick that actually was. He hung up the phone and turned back to his mother who was still in the doorway, looking at him with a worried expression on her face.

"What's wrong, Clark?" she asked.

"Jimmy said that Chloe got killed in an accident at LuthorCorp," he replied. Martha Kent gasped an placed her hands over her mouth. "I've got to get over there."

"Go ahead," she replied. "I'll come behind you and meet you there."

With that, Clark vanished in a blur and a gust of wind. He was five miles down the road before the screen door slapped shut behind him. Senator Martha Kent reached for the telephone and searched the addresses for the number of the one man that may have some answers. She knew that he could not be trusted, but at times in which LuthorCorp was brought into question, he usually had a small bit of help to offer.

She scrolled down until she found "L. Luthor" and allowed the phone to dial itself.

Less than six minutes after he disappeared from farmhouse in Smallville, Clark reappeared on the street in front of LuthorCorp in the downtown section of Metropolis. The sidewalk was so busy that no one noticed when a new face suddenly popped up out of nowhere. He looked around to be double sure that no one had seen him. That was when he saw Jimmy sitting on the steps of the Daily Planet across the street.

"Jimmy!" Clark yelled as he jogged over to where the photographer was sitting.

"Clark?" Jimmy asked, staring in disbelief as he stood up and walked toward him. "I just got off the phone with you a few minutes ago."

"What are you doing out here?" Clark asked.

"I don't know what to do," Jimmy said.

Clark could see that he was near tears, and looked suspiciously as if he had been crying already. He did not really blame him. Clark usually turned off his emotions until after a crisis was over. But Jimmy was not that kind of person. And he loved Chloe.

"Where was the accident?" Clark asked.

Jimmy looked up at the LuthorCorp building. "On the fifth floor. Professor Emil Hamilton has a lab up there. Lionel Luthor threatened me and security took me out of the building. I started to go back into the Planet, but this is as far as I got. I can't believe she's gone."

"Calm down, Jimmy," Clark said. "You don't ever know what you're dealing with when LuthorCorp is involved. But I'd much rather deal with Lionel than Lex."

"That's because he's never threatened to kill you," Jimmy said.

"Not directly," Clark said. "But he's a lot better of a man than he used to be." He looked at the building and started back across the street.

"Where are you going?" Jimmy asked.

"Inside," Clark said.

"They're not going to let you in," Jimmy replied.

"I'll find Lionel," Clark said. "I'm going to get some answers."

Clark and Jimmy stepped through the front doors and into the lobby. There were still several reporters standing around talking to police officers. The elevator doors opened just as they were walking to the information desk. Clark looked up just in time to see Lionel Luthor getting out.

Most of the reporters broke away from the officers that were writing up their statements to thy and get a comment from the company owner before he escaped to his limo that was undoubtedly waiting outside for him. Lionel held up his hands as if to say that he would make a short statement.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said. "There has been an accident in one of our laboratories. Rest assured that everything is now under control and that everything is being done to determine exactly what happened so that Professor Hamilton's experiment can be repaired. You will all be notified when he is ready to demonstrate it once again." He turned toward the front door and headed in that direction.

"Mr. Luthor!" one of the reporters called. "What about the reporter that was hit by the beam of the device?"

"I don't have any information about a reporter," Luthor said.

"Chloe Sullivan!" Jimmy yelled. Luthor stopped and looked up at him, noticing Clark for the first time. "Reporter for the Daily Planet! I believe you knew her personally, sir!"

"Yes," Luthor said, the trademark grin still on his face. "I know Ms. Sullivan. I'll find out what I can and issue a press release this afternoon." He turned to the door again but gave a short nod at Clark.

"Jimmy," Clark said. "Stay here. I'll be back in a few minutes. I'm going to see what I can get from Luthor."

"I'm going with you," Jimmy said. "She's my girlfriend, Clark!"

"I know, Jimmy," Clark said. "I'm going to do everything that I can. I promise that I won't leave you out of the loop. I'll be right back. Okay?"

Jimmy nodded and watched as Clark ran out the door.

"Mr. Luthor," Clark called as Lionel Luthor got into his limo. The older man leaned out and jerked his head, indicating the younger man to get in. Clark made his way to the other side of the limo and got inside.

"Clark," Lionel Luthor said. "What are you doing here?"

"Jimmy Olsen called me," Clark said. "He told me that Chloe was killed this morning."

"Jimmy doesn't know what happened," Luthor said. "Clark, I spoke with Professor Hamilton a few minutes ago. He has a theory. It's possible that Chloe wasn't killed."

"Then what happened to her?" Clark said.

"I don't know if you know anything about alternate dimensions," Luthor said. Clark decided against telling the man anything about his adventure in the Phantom Zone. "Hamilton thinks that Ms. Sullivan may have been transported to a parallel Earth."

"When is he going to bring her back?" Clark asked.

"Clark," Luthor said. "Hamilton's invention was never intended to send a person into another world. Assuming that he can recreate the circumstances that caused the accident, it could take months or even years to find out which world she was sent to. There are literally billions of these alternate worlds out there."

"I have to see this Professor Hamilton," Clark said. "I've got to help him."

"I'm sure that if you wanted to get past my security and find the professor, you would have no trouble doing so," Luthor replied. "But what help would you be to him, Clark. He's a brilliant scientist and you're a farmer from Smallville." Clark's fists clenched. "I mean that with no offense. But its the truth. Besides, I think that you may find that his secret ingrediant in his machine may be just the incentive that you need to stay away."

"What do you mean?" Clark asked.

"Hamilton used a prism carved from a meteor rock to create the beam from his projector," Luthor said.

"Well, that explains everything," Clark said. "Meteor rocks always throw a wrench into anything that they're a part of."

"I know that," Luthor said. "And Hamilton had orders not to use them. I will deal with him in time. However, judging by what happened to Ms. Sullivan when she was hit by the beam, I would think that the outcome would be even more tragic in your case."

Clark knew that Lionel was right. If he were to be hit by a pulse of pure Kryptonian energy it would probably kill him. He nodded.

"What am I supposed to tell Jimmy?" Clark said. "That I can't do anything?"

"I promise you that I'll do all that I can," Luthor said.

Clark took a little comfort in his words. But as with everything that Lionel Luthor said, there was always the possibility that he was lying.

End of Chapter Four

I know. I know. You guys were hoping to find out what's going on with Chloe. Well, the next chapter will be about Clark and Jimmy again. Sorry. But I'll get back to the mirror universe again real soon.

I love the reviews that you guys are sending me. And you have no idea how on the money you are with some of your suspicions as to what is coming up in a few more chapters. I have to tell you, I know what's coming up and I know how the story will end...but I don't know how long its going to be. I keep having more ideas as I go along.

And yes, I know that Lex is missing from the fic so far. Don't worry. His alternate self will show up a little later. But as for the version in this universe...he doesn't really come into play in this story. Neither does Lana. I had thought about writing a little side story to include them...but I felt that it would just take away from what's going on.

No, Clark doesn't really trust Lionel Luthor. But he is the only one that could turn to. He has to get information so that he can find out what happened to Chloe. Plus, Lionel does know his secret.

That's all for this time. Chapter 5 is coming up shortly.

Kal-El2k7


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

"Let's go."

Jimmy looked at Clark in amazement as he went breezing past him. He jumped up from the bench that he had been resting on and caught up with him.

"Where are we going?" Jimmy asked.

"The fifth floor," Clark replied. "Isn't that where it happened?"

"Uh, yeah," Jimmy said. "That's where Hamilton's lab is. But how do you plan to get there?"

"The elevator," Clark replied. They walked past the information desk as the lady seated there looked up to question them. She called to them and Jimmy looked back at her for a split second. Clark paid her no attention. But he did see the two guards that came running toward them. "Get on the elevator, Jimmy!"

Jimmy ran for the elevator closest to him, dodged one of the guards, dropped to the floor and rolled. He made it through the doors just as they were closing. The guard that had missed him ran toward him, but the doors closed just in time. He punched the button for the fifth floor and prayed that Clark would meet him there.

The two guards turned on Clark.

"Hey, guys," Clark said. "I don't want any trouble."

"Where's your friend headed?" one of the guards asked.

"Who? Him? I don't know who that was." Clark gave them a sly grin.

"You called him Jimmy," the other guard said. He turned to the woman at the information desk. "Call the security office. Get a guard at every elevator from here to the roof!" The woman nodded and got on the phone. "Do you want to make it a little easier on him and yourself and tell us what you guys are doing?"

"We were on a tour and got separated from our group," Clark said.

The first guard turned to the other one. "Tase him!" The second guard pulled a small black box from his belt and pointed it at Clark. As he watched him press the button on the side, it all seemed to slow down. Clark could see the two plugs and their wires explode from the end of the taser and fly toward him. He instinctively held out his hand and the objects bounced harmlessly off of his skin. As they fell to the floor, he reached down and grabbed hold of them.

"That's impossible!" the second guard yelled. His eyes were huge with amazement as Clark snatched the wires and the taser flew from his hands.

"Look," Clark said. "I'm through playing. I've got something to do."

"You're not going anywhere," the guard said. He pointed to the other side of the room and Clark followed his gesture. There were ten more guards filing through the door. "It's gonna take more than a magic trick to get past us."

"I guess so," Clark said. Every guard in the room rushed him. He dropped to the floor and let them all pile up around him. None of them knew exactly when it was that he vanished, and none of them was sure when the door to the stairwell was flung off of the hinges and then quickly welded back into place. But before any of them even realized that he was gone, Clark was emerging from the stairs into the fifth floor laboratory.

There were two guards standing next to the elevator, but Jimmy was nowhere to be found. He breezed across the room and hid behind a piece of equipment. He looked up at the fire alarm and sent two beams of heat vision toward it. The bell began to ring and the two guards dashed down the stairs.

"Jimmy!" Clark called. Jimmy slowly emerged from behind a stack of crates.

"How did you get past those guards, CK?" he asked.

"I got lucky," Clark said.

"Just like when the fire alarm went off right when you needed it to?" Jimmy asked.

"Gentlemen!" Clark turned and saw a man in his mid-thirties and wearing a white lab coat running toward the stairs. "The fire alarm is going off! We have to get out of here!"

"Professor Hamilton!" Jimmy yelled.

"That's Hamilton?" Clark asked. Jimmy nodded. Clark leaped toward the professor, trying to do anything so out of the ordinary that it would raise Jimmy's suspicions. He grabbed Hamilton by the back of his coat and pulled him back. "There's no fire. But I have some questions."

Two minutes later the fire alarm stopped. Clark had listened out for signs of the guards, but so far had heard nothing at least two floors above or below them. He sat down at a table in an observation room that overlooked the laboratory. Professor Hamilton was sitting across from him with a cup of black coffee.

"I didn't mean to scare you," Clark said.

"Clark doesn't really know his own strength," Jimmy said.

"It's quite alright," Hamilton said. "I've had a bit of a rough morning."

"I'd say you have," Jimmy said. "Killing my girlfriend and all."

"Jimmy," Clark said.

"Mr. Olsen," Hamilton said. "I could be jeopardizing my career by revealing this to you..."

"He doesn't think Chloe's dead," Clark said.

"What?" Jimmy asked.

"How did you know that?" Hamilton said.

"It doesn't matter," Clark said. "Professor, the rumor is that you used a meteor rock in your experiment."

"I did," Hamilton said. "I ignored the warnings. Those rocks give off a unique energy that isn't found anywhere else on this planet. I did a lot of studies on the samples that I brought back from Smallville. I couldn't find anything in them that would make my projector unstable."

"Meteor rocks make everything unstable," Clark said. "Didn't you hear about any of the mutations in Smallville? We've had people of all walks of life that have developed extraordinary powers after being exposed to them."

"I've heard the stories, Mr. Kent," Hamilton said. "But they're so hard to believe. I thought that they were nothing more than urban legends."

"May I interject?" Jimmy said. "Um, Chloe may be alive?"

"The energy from the meteor rocks enhanced the performance of my projector," Hamilton said. "But it also seems to have made it do much more than allow me to view other dimensions. Evidently, when the beam came into contact with Ms. Sullivan's DNA it caused her to come apart."

"So, it killed her," Jimmy said.

"No," Hamilton said. "Well, it may have. I'm not entirely sure. It's possible that here molecules could have been reassembled on another world somewhere in the multiverse."

"Okay," Clark said. "So, find the world that she went to and bring her back."

"Well," Hamilton began. "I've been working on the first part." He indicated the projector, which had been brought back online. It was firing its beam every ten seconds or so, changing the scene that was projected across from it. "The projector is set on a search mode. It is going back through its catalogue of worlds that it has previously shown. In addition, I have set up a probe that is searching for any DNA in those worlds that is out of phase. Theoretically, if there is a person in one of the other worlds that should not be there, my probe will find them and the projector will stop changing."

"And you haven't found anything yet?" Clark asked.

"No," Hamilton said. "But its only been running for a little over an hour. It could take quite a bit longer to cycle through the entire catalogue. But, even if I can find what world she's in..."

The professor was interrupted by the sound of an air horn blowing out in the lab.

"What's that?" Jimmy asked.

"That's the alarm," Hamilton said, standing up and looking down at the projector. The machine had stopped changing the scene in front of it. The beam was holding steady.

"You found her?" Clark asked.

"Well, the probe has found a world in which someone's DNA is out of phase," Hamilton said. "It could be her."

"Then bring her home," Jimmy said.

"That is what I was about to tell you, Mr. Olsen," the professor said. "I don't know how to bring her back. This was never supposed to happen. The only way that I can think of to get her back over here is to recreate the accident. And there is no way to do that unless there is another projector in that world."

"And even then, she has to know to get in front of it," Clark said. Hamilton nodded.

"So the only way for Chloe to get home..." Jimmy started.

"...is for someone to go over there and bring her back," Clark finished.

The all stood in silence, staring at the picture that the machine was projecting. It was an image of the very laboratory that they were standing in. They were so close. The professor believed that he had found where Chloe had been sent. But they could not get her back unless someone put themselves into serious danger.

"I'll go," Jimmy said. "Suit me up." He turned and headed for the door.

"Jimmy," Clark said, grabbing him by his shoulder. "You can't do that."

"Don't try and stop me, CK," Jimmy said. "Ten minutes ago I thought that Chloe was dead. Now, I may have a chance to save her."

"Yeah," Clark said. "But we can't just go and get blasted. We have to put some thought into this."

"I've put all of the thought into it that I need to," Jimmy said. "I have to let that thing zap me. Then I have to find Chloe and let the projector on that side zap us both."

"What if there isn't another projector?" Clark asked. "Then there won't be any way for either of you to get back. You'll be trapped there forever."

"I'd rather be trapped there with her than to live over here not knowing what happened to her," Jimmy said. He went through the door. Clark followed him. As soon as he stepped outside of the room he felt a burning pain reach all the way through his body. He dropped to his knees. The energy from the Kryptonite inside the projector was sucking all of his strength, and it was going fast. Jimmy and Professor Hamilton dropped to his side. He could see them saying something, but he could not hear them.

"Get me back inside," he whispered. The two men dragged him into the observation room and closed the door. Instantly, the burning faded and his strength began to return.

"Clark," Jimmy said. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Clark said. "I'm fine."

"What happened, Mr. Kent?" the professor asked.

"I don't really know," Clark said.

"Well, if you're alright, Clark," Jimmy said, "I've got something to do."

As Jimmy stepped back to the door, Clark knew that he was going to have to move fast. He saw that Hamilton was standing between him and Jimmy, and that he was turned away from him. He saw that Jimmy was reaching for the doorknob, but had not quite reached it yet. He puckered his lips and blew a strong gust of wind that blew Jimmy face first into the closed door. His head bounced off of the hard wooden door and he fell unconscious to the floor.

"Dear God," Hamilton said. "This is indeed a very strange day."

Clark leaned over Jimmy and looked to make sure that he was alright. He gave him a quick scan with his x-ray vision to be sure that he had not cracked his skull or anything. He seemed to be fine. He dragged him over to one side of the door and propped him against the wall.

"I think he's alright," Clark said. "He must have tripped or something."

"Well, he's right about one thing," Hamilton said. "If he wants to get his girlfriend back, he'll have to go get her. It's not something that I really feel comfortable doing. Mr. Luthor would probably have fired me if I had allowed him to do it. But I just feel so guilty about what happened to Ms. Sullivan. Perhaps I should go and get her myself."

"No, Professor," Clark said. "You're not going to get her and neither is Jimmy. I am."

"No, Clark. I can't let you do it. I don't believe that I would really have let Mr. Olsen do it either. It's simply too dangerous."

"I'm not asking your permission," Clark said. "Chloe is one of my closest friends and I'm not about to let her go. And, no offense to you, Professor, but I really don't see you as the rescuing type. I'm going to go over there and get her. But, I'm going to need your help."

"What do you need me to do, Mr. Kent?" Hamilton asked.

"I need you to promise me that you'll never reveal to anyone what I'm about to tell you," Clark said. Hamilton nodded. "I can't get close to the meteor rocks. I'm kind of allergic to them."

"You have an allergy to rocks?" Hamilton asked.

"It's the radiation that they put off," Clark said. "They make me weak. That's why I had that spell outside just now. I don't usually have a problem with it because I can stay away from them. But I have to get hit by that beam to get to Chloe, and it could kill me."

Hamilton stared at him for minute. "That's not possible, Mr. Kent. I've been studying samples of those rocks for years. They can affect a person if exposed to them over a prolonged length of time. But you wouldn't be able to have a reaction such as that unless your entire physiology was completely different from that of other human beings."

"I'm not asking you to understand it, Professor," Clark said. "Just take my word for it. Someday it may be explained to you. But right now, I just need you to help me. I have to go through and find my friend, but I won't survive the trip without protection."

Hamilton continued to look at him, his mind going over all sorts of possible explanations to Clark's dilemma. Finally, he walked over to a cabinet against the back wall. He opened it and pulled out an apron of some sort. It had sleeves and looked as if it would cover a man from his neck to his knees.

"I developed this when I first started experimenting with the meteor rocks," Hamilton said. "It's lined with lead. It won't keep you from being affected by the proximity of the energy, but it should lessen the effect of being hit by the beam."

Clark looked at it. He did not know if it would work. It would probably help him survive that blast, if he could survive being close to the actual rock for the amount of time that it would take to get there. He took the garment and put it on. It covered him fairly well.

"Is there any way for me to stay away from the rock until its time to do it?" Clark asked.

"Oh, yes," Hamilton said. "All I have to do is go down and find out which world the projector is locked on and then I can turn it off. The rock is enclosed in a lead case. You won't be exposed until I switch it back on."

Clark nodded and the Professor left the room. He could see him below, working on his computer and switching off the machine. Finally, he waved to Clark. He left the observation deck, relieved to find that he was not feeling the effects of the Kryptonite.

"You work fast, Professor," Clark said with a smile as he jogged down the stairs.

"You'll be happy to know that the world that I believe Ms. Sullivan is on is nearly identical to our own," Hamilton said. "You don't have to worry about being underwater or in an old west town or anything like that."

"Great," Clark said. "I'll just zip across the universe to a dimension that looks just like this one. I won't even know that I'm there."

"Just remember," Hamilton said. "Your best bet is to find a counterpart of myself and explain what's happened. If there isn't one..."

"I'll figure something out," Clark said. In his mind he had ideas of searching out Kryptonian history to find anything similar to this. Perhaps his ancestors had already conquered interdimensional travel. After all, they did have the Phantom Zone."

"Hey!" The two men turned and saw several security guards filing out of the stairwell. "There he is! Freeze!"

"There's no time to talk about it anymore, Professor!" Clark yelled. "Just do it!"

Clark ran to the projector and stood directly in front of him. He saw Hamilton lean over the computer console just as one of the guards grabbed him from behind. Another was coming toward him. He blew the one heading for him away with a gust of breath. Then he used his heat vision on the other's shoulder. The man screamed and fell backward. Professor Hamilton went back to the computer and finished tapping in his commands. He stood up and gave Clark a thumbs up.

A second later a blast of green energy erupted from the projector and Clark felt his insides tearing apart.

All of the guards shuddered at the sound of his screams.

End of Chapter Five

I hope you guys enjoyed these last two chapters. I was able to work on them over the long weekend, but I had to wait to get back to work in order to post them. My laptop at home is so slow that I was afraid it would dump the whole thing before I could get it to the site.

Anyway, I'm probably going to continue the Clark storyline in the next chapter. I don't really feel like I can break away from him just yet. But don't worry. I'll get back to Chloe in chapter seven.

Chapter six will be here in the next couple of days.

Kal-El2k7


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

There was nothing but pain.

It was not like anything that Clark had ever experienced. He had been exposed to Kryptonite hundreds of times. When he was a child he merely made him feel sick. As he grew older and his abilities began to develop it made him feel weak all over. If there was enough of it he would feel a burning sensation, as if his blood were heating up inside his veins. But this was different.

Being hit with energy that was almost purely filtered through a meteor rock was like getting blasted with fire ten times hotter than any known to man. He knew that if he had not put on the lead apron that Hamilton had given him he would have died instantly. And the possibility that he could still die was not entirely out of the question.

It seemed like hours before the burning stopped. He still felt pain shooting throughout his entire body. But he knew that the energy that had surrounded him had finally let go of its hold on him. He slowly opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor in Hamilton's lab, but he could not move his arms or his legs to pick himself up. There were men and women in white lab coats running toward him. They were speaking, but he could not hear any words coming from their mouths.

"My name…" he said. He did not have the energy to get more than a whisper to pass through his lips. "Kent," he said. The men and women all looked at one another. Slowly, he began to hear muffled words enter his ears.

"He said his name is Kent," one of them said.

"Where did he come from?" another asked.

"I don't know," came the voice of another. "We just got here. There's no telling how long he's been lying here."

"He could have been left from the accident yesterday."

"And he wasn't found when they searched the place? It's hard to believe that they'd miss him."

"We need to call an ambulance."

Clark had started to get a little of the feeling back in his limbs. He shook his head and slowly sat up.

"No," he whispered. "I'm fine. I don't want to go to the hospital."

"Mr. Kent," one of the men said. "You look as though you've been attacked. Were you involved the accident during Emil Hamilton's demonstration yesterday?"

"What?" Clark asked. "No. I came to see him and I just passed out. Is he here?"

"No," a woman said. "Mr. Luthor let him go."

"Speaking of Mr. Luthor," another man said as he stepped closer to Clark. "Did you say that your name is Kent? You look a lot like Mr. Luthor's son."

"Lex?" Clark asked, now standing upright. He was feeling better, but he still had a weak feeling in his legs and he was very dizzy.

"No," the man said. "Lucas. You are! You're Lucas Luthor!"

"Mr. Luthor," the woman said. "Please let us get you to the hospital."

"Luthor?" Clark said. He was confused, and his dizziness was not helping. "No. I've got to go. I've got someone that I have to find."

He walked to the elevator and pressed the button to call the car. It came in a few seconds. He could feel the eyes of all of those scientists burning into him as he stepped inside and the doors closed behind him.

"Call security," one of the men said. "Something is very wrong with him. And call his father."

When Clark emerged from the elevator he found himself staring at the same two guards that he had been staring at before he went up.

"You guys again?" he said. "Look, I'm not feeling very good right now so let's not fight."

"Mr. Luthor," one of the guards said. "We've just spoken to your father. He's given us orders to retain you until he gets here. He told us to use any means necessary."

_I don't have time for this,_ Clark thought. He reached out for the guard and punched him square in the jaw. Pain shot through his hand as if his had broken it. The guard had barely flinched. _What happened? My abilities are gone!_

"I'm sorry to have to do this, Mr. Luthor," the other guard said as he pulled the taser from his belt. This time the plugs reached their target and hit him in the chest. A pulse of electricity jolted his body and he dropped to the floor.

He did not lose consciousness. He was still awake when the guard picked him up and set him down on a bench close to the information desk. He slowly shook his head to try and relieve some of the dizziness. The woman behind the desk brought him a glass of water and asked him if he would like an aspirin or something. He told her no. The guards were standing five feet in front of him, watching him. They stayed there until Lionel Luthor strode through the front door.

"Close the lobby!" he barked at the guards. They nodded and bolted away to lock the front door and shut off the elevators from the floor. Luthor stood in front of Clark, a look of angry disappointment on his face. "What are you doing?"

"Mr. Luthor," Clark said. "I didn't mean to cause trouble. I'm just trying to find my friend."

"What is the matter with you?" Luthor asked. "What is all of this 'Mr. Luthor" stuff?"

"Excuse me?" Clark asked. "I'm sorry, sir. But I've got to tell you that I'm not really from around here."

"Lucas!" Luthor screamed. "I am a very busy man. Your stupid adolescent pranks were tolerable when you were in high school. You're a grown man now and I've placed you in charge of all of my interests in Smallville. You shouldn't even be in Metropolis. Are you drunk?"

"Lucas?" Clark asked. "Lucas who?"

"Lucas Luthor!" Lionel said.

"Luthor?" Clark did not understand. He did not know a whole lot about the alternate universe theory, but he understood that almost everyone had a counterpart in all of the other parallel worlds in what Hamilton called the multiverse. "My counterpart was raised by Lionel Luthor?"

"What are you talking about?" Luthor said. "Talk to me, not to yourself." He turned to one of the guards. "Where was he?"

"He was on the fifth floor, sir," one of the guards replied. "He was muttering something about his name being Kent."

"Kent?" Luthor replied. Clark looked at him in his eyes. He leaned forward so that only the older man would be able to hear his next words.

"Did you raise me?" Clark whispered. "Are you the one that found my ship?"

Luthor stood up and turned to the guards. "Get him in a limo and have him taken to the mansion in Smallville," he said. "Find that idiot Hamilton and have him taken there as well."

"Yes, sir," the guards said.

The counterparts of Lionel Luthor and Emil Hamilton had been in the study for more than an hour. Their voices had been raised at times, and at others Clark had barely been able to hear anything at all. His abilities were not completely gone. He found that if he concentrated very hard he could hear a phrase hear and there in the other room. But he was not nearly as strong as he was accustomed to.

He sat on a chair in the hallway of the mansion. A security guard stood just to his right. Normally, he would have gotten up and ran away at supersonic speed. But he knew that with the level of energy that he now had, he would barely get faster than a normal person. And he had no idea what would happen if the guard decided to use that gun that he had strapped to his hip.

Lionel Luthor came through the door and ushered Professor Hamilton into the hallway. He looked at the guard.

"I don't want him to go anywhere," Luthor said. He turned to Clark. "Get in here!"

Clark got up and went into the study. Luthor slammed the door and turned to him.

"What do you know?" Luthor demanded.

"What do you mean?" Clark asked.

"I mean, you're not my son!" Luthor replied. "You're some farmhand duplicate that Hamilton transferred here with his stupid toy!"

"My name is Clark Kent," he said. "I live here in Smallville…or another Smallville, I guess."

"And what do you know of my son?" Luthor asked.

"I don't know anything about your son," Clark said.

"I've had Hamilton explain everything about this contraption that he invented," Luthor said. "He said that if you really are the counterpart to Lucas, then you will have the same abilities as he does."

"What kind of abilities does he have?" Clark asked.

"You know good and well what I'm talking about," Lionel said. "You said it yourself back in Metropolis. Do you have superior strength? Speed? Heat vision? Can you see through things?"

"Mr. Luthor," Clark said. "I assure you that I'm not…."

Clark was interrupted by Lionel Luthor's right hook to his jaw. His head jerked back from him and he tasted the bitter flavor of his blood in his mouth. He turned back and spit a mouthful of it onto the hardwood floor of the study. Luthor stared at him.

"You're not as strong as Lucas," Lionel said. "But a punch like that should have given you more than a busted lip. Tell me what you know."

Clark's fist curled up as his eyes met the other man's.

"If Lucas is your son then you already know more about him than anyone else," Clark said. "I will tell you that I know you aren't his biological father. You either adopted him, or you found a pod that fell from the sky during the meteor shower in 1989. He's not human."

"And neither are you," Luthor said. "Am I right?"

"Where I come from you already know the answer to that," Clark said.

Lionel Luthor opened the door and leaned out into the hall. He motioned to Professor Hamilton and they both came back into the room.

"Emil, I'm going to give you your job back," Luthor said. "But I want you to forget about this parallel world garbage and get back to the project that I initially hired you for."

Hamilton leaned toward Luthor. Clark tuned in his hearing as much as he could.

"Mr. Luthor," the professor was saying. "We haven't collected enough blood samples from Lucas to go forward to the next phase. If we rush it, he will become suspicious."

"We won't need anymore samples from Lucas," Luthor said out loud. He did not seem to care what Clark heard, which gave him an uneasy feeling about how long he was planning to keep him around. "We can get everything that we need from Mr. Kent. He has the exact same DNA as my son."

"Do you mean that you were telling the truth about him?" Hamilton asked. "He's a duplicate of Lucas from another world?"

"Indeed," Luthor said. "Now, Clark, I suggest that you go with the good doctor."

"You said that Lucas was like me," Clark said. "I took that to mean that I could trust you."

"Lucas is my son," Lionel said. "You are no one. Why would you trust me?"

Lionel gave Clark another right hook. This time it was hard enough for him to lose consciousness. When he came to he found himself lying on a table with restraints across his chest and his limbs. He pulled at them with all of his might, but he still had not regained his strength. He looked down at his arm. There was a needle in his vein with a tube running to a container that was slowly filling up with his blood.

_They're going to kill me,_ he thought. He closed his eyes and concentrated, pulling his mind deep within himself to summon what little bit of strength that he had remaining. He knew that he would have only one chance to escape. What would happen to him after that he would have to leave in the hands of fate.

With one last burst of energy, Kal-El of Krypton broke from his restraints and exploded through the ceiling of the room to find himself back on the first floor of the mansion. He saw Hamilton still in the room below staring up at him. He turned to the door and found Lionel Luthor blocking his way. He reached out and grabbed the man and tossed him effortlessly into a way, busting plaster and breaking wood. Clark grabbed the front door and ripped it from the hinges, throwing it to the side like a piece of garbage. The he shot off at an incredible speed until he finally used up his last bit of energy and crumpled to the side of the road ten miles away.

A few minutes went by before he heard a car stop and someone get out. There were footsteps around him. He heard his mother's voice.

"Mom?" he gasped.

"It looks like Lucas Luthor," a voice said. "Maybe we should call an ambulance." He recognized the voice. But it could not be who it sounded like.

"Our house is closer, dad," another familiar voice said. "Let's take him there."

He felt himself being picked up and swore that he heard his mother tell him that everything would be alright before he drifted off again.

End of Chapter Six

Hey, I'm going back to Chloe's storyline in the next chapter. I was really surprised that I was able to get chapter 6 done today. Hopefully chapter 7 will be up tomorrow.

I'm loving your reviews. Keep 'em coming.

Kal-El2k7


	7. Chapter 7

Okay, this is probably going to be the longest chapter that I've written so far. But I hope that you'll find it to be the most interesting so far. There are a couple of things that happen in this chapter that I really had to think twice about. Once you read it, you will know what it is that I am talking about. I hope that you are satisfied with my decisions.

Anyway…on with the show.

Chapter Seven

It was mid morning before Lois finally shook Chloe awake. She sat up on the cot and rubbed her eyes.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"A little after ten," Lois replied.

"What?" Chloe asked as she reached for her watch on the coffee table. "Why did you let me sleep so late?"

"You looked like you need the rest," Lois said. "I'm sure it takes a lot out of a person to travel across the universe."

"We should be in Metropolis by now," Chloe said. "We've got to find Hamilton!"

"We will, Chlo," Lois said. "Calm down. Eat some breakfast."

Chloe got out of bed and walked into the kitchen. There was a pan full of old oatmeal on the stove and a plate of burnt toast on the table.

"Do you have any coffee?" she asked.

"Sure do," Lois said. "Swiped it from the Talon myself."

Chloe poured her a cup of coffee and sat down at the table.

"How are the love birds," Chloe asked.

They must have collapsed," Lois replied. "I haven't heard a peep from them all morning."

"Really?" Chloe asked. "I would think that a fortune five hundred business man like Lucas would need to be up earlier than this."

"You're probably right," Lois said. "I'd better wake them." She walked over to the alternate Chloe's bedroom door and knocked. There was no answer. "Chloe. Wake up." She waited for a second or two. "Lucas? Chloe?"

"Maybe you should open the door," Chloe said.

Lois nodded and turned the doorknob. It was not locked. She pushed and it slowly opened. When she finally went inside Chloe heard her gasp. She ran in behind her to find her counterpart sitting up in the bed with a sheet wrapped around her. Her left eye was swollen almost completely shut.

"What happened?" Lois asked. But she did not look like she was going to say anything.

"Did Lucas do that to you?" Chloe asked her.

The other Chloe turned to her, tears running down her face.

"I don't know what you said to him last night," she told her. "But whatever it was really set him off. He made me tell him about you. He started hurting me and he wouldn't stop until I told him who you were."

"You told him that I'm…" Chloe started.

"I told him everything," she replied. "He said that you knew something about him. He said that he couldn't let you tell anyone."

"What do you know?" Lois asked her. "How could you have a secret about Lucas? You didn't even know him until yesterday."

"I don't know anything about Lucas," Chloe said. "But I know some things about Clark. I guess this guy is way more Luthor than Kent."

"You shouldn't have said anything, Chloe," Lois said. "This is not your world. Whether or not people here look like your friends, they're not. They're completely different people."

"Lionel and Lucas are very powerful people here," the other Chloe said. "They'll do anything to keep their power."

"We need to get you out of here," Lois said. "Lucas is usually a pretty good guy. But when he gets angry people tend to get hurt."

"I can't just leave," Chloe said. "Look what he did to her."

"It isn't anything that he hasn't done before," Lois said. "I'm going to carry your things to the car. Get dressed and meet me there."

Lois left the room and the alternate Chloe got up from the bed, evidently forgetting that she was still naked, and walked slowly to the bathroom. She closed the door behind her.

Chloe went into the other room to get her things together. She did not hear the door open behind her and she did not notice Lucas until she finally turned around. She screamed.

"Chloe!" It was her counterpart. Apparently Lucas had locked her in the bathroom before coming in here.

"Tell her that you are okay," Lucas said as he reached out and grabbed her by her throat.

"I'm okay, Chloe," she called. "Just relax."

"Now, we're going to have a little chat," Lucas said. "You're going to tell me what you know about me."

"I don't know anything about you," Chloe said. Lucas only tightened his grasp a fraction, but it felt like a vise to her.

"Tell me about your friend," Lucas said. "Is he some kind of freak?"

"No!" Chloe said. "I can't explain it. He's an alien! The Kents found a space pod with him inside when he was four or five years old!"

"I'm from another planet?" Lucas asked. "Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yes," Chloe said.

"And why do I get sick all of the time?" Lucas said.

"I don't know," Chloe replied. "You could be getting exposure to meteor rocks."

"What meteor rocks?" Lucas asked.

"Big chunks of your planet that followed you here," she said.

Lucas dropped her to the floor and disappeared like a bolt of lightening. The door was flung open and Lois, who had been trying to get it unlocked, was shoved into the wall.

Chloe ran back into the bedroom and let her double out of the bathroom. The other girl slumped onto her and began to sob.

"It's alright," Chloe said. "He's gone."

"He'll be back," the other Chloe replied.

"We'll be ready for him," Lois said.

"No," Chloe said. "You can't fight him. He'll win every time. You guys need to get out of here."

"We don't have anywhere to go, Chlo," Lois said. "But we can get you out of here. You're in more danger than either one of us. Now get to the car."

Chloe turned to her counterpart. "You're coming with us."

"I'm naked," the girl said.

"Get dressed," Chloe responded. "Fast."

"What happened?"

Professor Hamilton was now standing beside Lionel Luthor on the first floor of the mansion. They were both looking down at the giant hole that Clark had created in the floor that led to the cellar.

"Obviously he wasn't as weak as we thought, sir," Hamilton replied.

"Did you get a large enough sample?" Luthor asked.

"Not quite, sir," Hamilton said. "I have enough Kryptonian blood to animate the clones that we already have. But if I'm going to begin mass production I'll have to have another four or five pints."

"I really don't know what I pay you for," Luthor said. "I thought that you only needed a few cells to make a clone."

"Well, yes," Hamilton said. "But that boy has been corrupted in some way. Perhaps the meteor rock that was involved in my experiment deteriated his abilities. I really need pure Kryptonian DNA to create a viable clone. Lucas would be ideal."

"We've been taking samples from Lucas since the day that I found him," Luthor said. "If we keep taking from him, he'll become aware of what we're doing. Then he won't trust me."

"I already don't trust you, Father."

The two men turned and found that Lucas Luthor had been standing behind them. Neither of them knew for how long.

"Hello, Son," Lionel said.

"Professor," Lucas said, not taking his eyes from his father. "Would you excuse us, please?"

"Mr. Luthor," Hamilton started. "I really should tell…"

"I said go!" Lucas screamed. Lionel nodded to the professor and he scurried around them and out the door.

"What do you mean you don't trust me?" Lionel asked. "What's the matter?" 

"You've been lying to me my whole life," Lucas said. "You told me that I developed my abilities because I had been exposed to radiation during the meteor storm."

"You were," Lionel said. "I was here in Smallville looking at land for my company and there was a huge meteor shower. Most of the town was destroyed."

"I know about the shower, Father," Lucas said. "Why didn't you ever tell me the truth about that day?"

"What truth would that be?" Lionel asked, feigning innocence.

"That you found me in some kind of pod!" Lucas screamed. "That I'm an alien from another planet! That the meteors were chunks of my own planet!"

"I didn't know that about the meteors, Son," Lionel said. "But, yes. You are from another world. My scientists believe that you came from a planet very far from here that exploded five years before your pod arrived. You're biological parents must have sent you to save you from their fate. The pod crashed in a field that I was having surveyed. It nearly killed a farmer and his wife. I got to you while they were unconscious and took you home with me."

"So you saved me?" Lucas asked.

"That's right, Lucas," Lionel said. "I brought you home and raised you as my own son."

"But you don't think of me as your own son," Lucas said. "Do you, Father?"

"What do you mean?" Lionel replied. "Of course I do.'

"You know what my abilities are," Lucas said. "I was able to hear you and Hamilton a long time before I got here. You've been extracting my DNA for years to create duplicates of me. You're trying to build an army of supermen."

"Lucas," his father said. "What use would I have with an army of supermen?"

"Profit," Lucas said. "That's what it's always been about with you. Profit. Money. And you raised me to think the same way. Everything is always about what I can get out of it."

"I'm glad that I instilled that in you," Lionel said. "It will leave you with less of a chance of getting hurt."

"I know something else that you instilled in me," Lucas said. He grabbed his father by the throat and lifted him from the ground. "You taught me to get to the top no matter what stands in my way. I've lived my whole life afraid to let anyone see what I can do. I'm not living that way anymore. With my powers I could tower over anything and anyone…including you."

"Son." Lionel's voice was a choked whisper. "Don't."

"I'm not living in your shadow anymore, Father," Lucas said. "You've lied to me since I was a child about who I am. You planned to exploit me. You probably would have sold me to the highest bidder."

The two men looked at one another in the eyes. For the first time in years they finally saw each other for who they truly were. Lionel saw the small child that he had pulled from the wreckage and taken to safety so many years ago. And Lucas saw the man that he had trusted that was no more than a selfish salesman.

"Lucas," Lionel croaked. "I'm sorry."

"So am I, Father," Lucas said. He let go of Lionel's throat and the man plunged through the hole in the floor. He landed in a heap of broken bones on the floor of the cellar. "So am I."

Lionel shed a tear as he watched his son vanish in a rage. He did not know if he would survive. But he knew that his son must be stopped before he did any more damage. And there was only one man in this world that could stop him.

"Clark," he choked.

They had all decided that the alternate Chloe's car would be a much faster ride than Lois'. She had a brand new mustang that Lucas had given her as a Christmas gift a few months earlier. It would probably get them out of Smallville at speeds that would tear the old pickup to pieces.

"The idea is to get out of Dodge without tall, dark, and controlling seeing us," Lois said. "Don't you think a car that he bought himself will sort of stick out?"

"Do you have any idea how many cars Lucas owns?" the alternate Chloe said. "He won't notice us once we get out on the road."

"What about before we get out on the road?" Chloe asked. Lois and the dark haired Chloe looked at her. She was staring off down the street. They followed her gaze. Lucas was about a half of a block away, leaning against a mail box with his arms crossed. He was watching them and smiling.

"Oh, my god," the other Chloe said. "He found us."

"He didn't find us," Lois said. "We haven't left yet."

"Look at his eyes, Lois," Chloe said. "He's lost it. He looks different."

"Yeah," Lois replied. "He looks really pissed."

"He looks like an angry Luthor," Chloe added.

Lucas casually walked down the street as they finished putting their things in the trunk of the car. He stopped a few feet away and cocked his head. He was still smiling.

"Are you ladies going somewhere?" he asked.

"Lucas," the other Chloe started. "Please. Just leave us alone."

"I was only asking if you were going somewhere," Lucas said.

"Just go away!" she screamed.

"Shut up!" Lucas returned. "Just keep your mouth shut or I'll do more than dot your eye!"

"You're a piece of work," Chloe said. "Do you know that?"

"Chlo," Lois said. Chloe put up her hand to stop her from saying anything else.

"Excuse me?" Lucas asked.

"I know who you are, Lucas," Chloe said. "I know things about you that you don't even know. I know that your real name is Kal-El. I know that your home was called Krypton. And I know that hurting Chloe was easier for you than it would be for me to step on an ant."

Lucas jumped forward. Chloe knew that he was going to hit her and that if he used all of his strength he would probably kill her. But he did not. He stopped only inches from her and stared into her eyes. She saw the burning rage in his eyes.

"You don't know anything," Lucas said. "I'm not Clark Kent!"

"You sure aren't," she replied.

"You think that you can come over here and change our world so that it matches your's," Lucas said. "But you can't. Things didn't play out over here like it did where you came from. We all got dealt a different hand."

Chloe knew that he was right. Things were a lot different here. Lois was not as fearless. Her own duplicate had undoubtedly seen enough rotten human behavior in her short life that it made her dark and jaded. And Clark…his was the most extreme difference of them all. But she had always known that she would not be able to change their differences. Had she not? Or was Lucas right about that, too? Had she had some fantasy in her mind of fixing everything that was wrong in this universe?

"You're nosey," Lucas said. "I don't like nosey people."

"You're a bully," Chloe replied. "I don't like bullies." She turned to Lois and the other Chloe and nodded. They all got into the car with Lois in the driver's seat and Chloe's double sitting next to her. Chloe sat in the back, looking out the window at Lucas as they drove away.

"I can't believe that he just let us go," Chloe's duplicate said.

"He didn't," Chloe replied. "Luthors don't know how to let anything go."

Lucas fumed. His blood was boiling with anger. That little witch had tried to make a fool of him. And to so blatantly gloat over the fact that she knew more about his secret than even he himself knew. Obviously, whoever had sent his double to this planet in her world cared more about him than they did here. They had thought to send him information about himself and his history.

Or it could be that they had sent him that information and his father had kept it hidden from him all these years. That made him even angrier. He thought of Lionel Luthor, lying broken on the floor of the mansion's cellar. He thought about going back and finishing the job. But he decided to wait. If the old man was still alive when all of this was over, he would get the information that he wanted from him. Then he would finish him off.

Right now he had to take care of this meddling little girl from another world.

Lucas vanished from sight as he sped off faster than a bullet for the bridge that led out of Smallville. He would do what was needed there.

"Is that the Kent farm?" Chloe asked as they passed the only field that she had seen in this version of Smallville that still appeared to be farmland.

"Yeah," Lois said. "It's the only one left in town. Lionel and Lucas have been trying to get them to sell it for years. I think it's only a matter of time before they force them out."

"Hey, guys," the other Chloe said, her eyes widening in amazement. "What is that?"

They all looked out of the front windshield at a dark blur that was racing past their car to the other end of the bridge that they were approaching. It stopped on the other side and they saw that it was Lucas. He was standing with his legs braced and his shoulder out, as if he were ready for impact.

"Lois!" Chloe screamed. "Hit the brakes!"

She did, but they went into a skid, still racing forward directly for the man in the center of the road.

"It's too late!" Lois screamed. "Bail out!"

The driver's door and the back door opened. Lois and Chloe threw themselves from the car and hit the ground hard. Chloe felt her arm pop and knew that she had broken yet another bone in it. Her breath left her as she rolled uncontrollably to the side of the road. Then, she looked up in time to see the Mustang slam into Lucas at forty or fifty miles per hour. He did not even move a muscle. It was as if the vehicle had hit a steel pole.

"No!" Lois screamed. She was ten feet away from her, and she had blood running down her face.

"Lois!" Chloe called back. "Are you okay?"

"It's Chloe!" Lois yelled. "She didn't get out!"

Chloe looked on in horror as Lucas tore himself from the wreckage. He was not even scratched. His clothes, however, were hanging on him in ribbons. He stood up straight and turned toward them.

"Run, Lois!" Chloe screamed.

"We can't just leave her," Lois replied. Almost as if in answer to her statement, the car exploded in a huge fireball that rose quickly to the sky, leaving a pillar of fire in its place. The bridge rocked and Chloe thought that it would give way beneath them. Lucas was engulfed in the explosion and pieces of the car began to rain down all around them.

"Go!" Chloe screamed. "Now!"

Quickly, they scurried off of the bridge and covered themselves in the cornfield next to the highway.

The only sounds that could be heard were the crackling fire and Lois' sobs.

End of Chapter Seven

I really struggled with the decision to kill Chloe's duplicate. I wanted to show just how ruthless Lucas really is. There was no reason for him to kill anyone. He was only angry with Chloe because he thought that she was nosey. But I wanted to show that even that was a capital offense in his book.

Lucas changed rather quickly. I know this. But, you know that on the show Lex was portrayed as a good guy for quite a while. It took them a couple of years to show how evil he could be. I don't have that much time. Once Lucas found out that he had been lied to all of these years, he just snapped. He doesn't want to pretend anymore.

You guys have been really kind with your reviews. I really enjoy reading them. Every time that I check my e-mail and see that someone has read my latest chapter and reviewed it, it's like opening a present at Christmas. Please, keep them coming. You make me want to continue to write this story and to develop more when I'm done.

Some of you have asked about alternate Lex. Yes, he is alive. He will make his first appearance in chapter eight. Thanks again for reading my story.

Kal-El2k7


	8. Chapter 8

I've got to tell you guys that I'm having a lot more fun writing this fic than you are reading it. I'm just as intrigued about what's happening to these characters as you are. Every time I think that I know what's going to happen, something else comes from my fingers. The characters in the mirror universe are living a life of their own. That being said…on with the show.

Chapter Eight

Clark opened his eyes. He was lying on the couch staring up at the ceiling. His head felt like someone had driven a spike through it. He blinked and the pain subsided a bit. He slowly sat up and looked around. Everything was just the way that it was supposed to be. He was definitely in the farmhouse where he lived with his mother. Could everything that he remembered happening have been a dream?

Martha Kent stepped into the room from the kitchen carrying a bowl with a damp washcloth in it. She took one look at him and smiled.

"Mom?" Clark asked. "What happened to me? Why am I here?"

Martha's smile disappeared and a look of confusion spread across her face. Clark's face instantly matched her's when a man that he had not expected to see came into the room behind her.

"Martha?" Jonathan Kent said. "What's the matter?"

"We should have taken him to the hospital, Jonathan," she replied. "He must have hit his head or something."

"Why do you say that?" Jonathan said, looking at Clark with concern.

"He just called me his mom," she replied.

Jonathan smiled. "Lucas? Are you alright, son?"

Clark stared at him in disbelief. "Dad?"

Jonathan stepped over to him, taking the cloth from Martha and handed it to him.

"Why don't you put this over your forehead and lie down for a while?" Jonathan suggested. "I don't know how you got out there on the highway. But whatever happened has got your mind all fuzzy."

"I'm not fuzzy," Clark said. "I'm Clark Kent."

"Clark Kent?" Martha asked. "My god, Jonathan. He's got amnesia. He's made up a name for himself and everything."

"Calm down, Martha," Jonathan said.

"Look," Clark said. "I don't know how to tell you the truth without sounding completely crazy. I know that I look like Lionel Luthor's son, but I'm not. When you found me I was trying my best to get away from him."

"You were trying to escape from Lionel Luthor?" Martha asked.

"Yes," Clark said.

Jonathan and Martha Kent looked at one another for a moment. Finally, Jonathan let out a sigh.

"Sounds like it runs in the family," he said.

Clark looked from one to the other. "What does that mean?"

Jonathan walked to the front door and opened it. He leaned out onto the porch and beckoned at someone. When he came back inside he was accompanied by another person that Clark knew well from his own world. He stood up, not sure if he was about to be greeted with friendliness or hostility.

"Lex!" he said. Lex Luthor stood in front of him with an odd smile on his face. He was just as bald as he had always been, but he was wearing a plaid shirt and denim jeans. It was almost as if he were trying to dress as Clark for Halloween.

"Actually," Jonathan said. "This is Alexander. He's our son."

Clark's head was swimming. It was as if he had landed in some sort of bizarro world. He was a Luthor and Lex was a Kent. They had swapped places. The dizziness settled over him again and he felt faint. Martha must have sensed it because she put her arms around him and helped him to sit back down.

"Hello, Lucas," Alexander said. "I haven't seen you in years."

"Alex," Jonathan said. "I know you want to tell him what you know. But he's just had an episode. He doesn't even know who he is."

"Mr. Kent," Clark said. "With all due respect, I know exactly who I am." Jonathan looked at him, his stern features set. Clark knew that if this man were anything like his own father had been, he did not like him. He would not have liked him from the very beginning due only to the fact that his last name was Luthor. "I know it sounds impossible, but I am telling you the truth. Just hear me out."

"Alright," Jonathan said.

"My name is Clark Kent," Clark said. "I'm from a parallel version of this world. I was sent here by Professor Emil Hamilton at LuthorCorp to retrieve a friend of mine that was transported here by accident yesterday."

"That's quite a story," Martha said.

"Indeed," Jonathan said.

"I know," Clark said. "But you people live in Smallville. You should know by now that the impossible happens all of the time."

Alexander laughed as he sat down on the sofa next to Clark. "He's got a point there, Dad," he said.

"My world is a lot like this one," Clark said. "But over there, I'm a Kent. You two are my parents. Alexander is known as Lex, and he's a Luthor." He looked at Jonathan. "And you died a few months ago."

"I died?" Jonathan asked.

Clark nodded. "It was a heart attack."

"I'm a Luthor?" Alexander asked. "Lex Luthor?"

"Yeah," Clark replied.

Alexander looked up at his father. "I think he's telling the truth, Dad."

"Of course you do, Alex," Jonathan said. "You believe every weird story from the X-Files that comes through this crazy town. You've been working on that book of your's for too long."

"Jonathan," Martha said. "Calm down. You know what the doctor said about stress."

"It affects your heart," Clark said. "Right?"

"Yeah," Jonathan said. "And now, thanks to you, I can continue to worry about whether or not it's going to kill me."

"What kind of book are you writing?" Clark asked Alexander.

"It's sort of a compilation of stories from our local paper," Alexander said. "We've had a lot of people over the years that have developed unique abilities."

"Because of the meteor rocks," Clark added.

Alexander smiled. "You know about them?" he asked.

"Yeah," Clark said.

"Dad," Alexander said. "Tell him. Come on."

"Alex," Jonathan said. "I'm not even sure if I believe the story anymore."

"Well," Alexander said. "If he really is a copy of Lucas then he'll believe you. It doesn't matter."

"What are you talking about?" Clark asked.

Jonathan turned to Martha. "Would you mind getting me a cup of coffee, Dear?"

"Decaf," Martha replied.

"Of course," Jonathan said with a smile. He sat down on a chair that faced the two younger men on the sofa. "Back in 1989 there was a meteor shower that devastated Smallville."

"I know," Clark said. "We had the same thing."

"Was there a spaceship involved in your version?" Alexander asked.

Clark looked carefully at the man that sat next to him. In his world if he had heard that voice ask him that question, he would simply have told him that he did not know what he was talking about. But the honesty in Alexander's eyes was something to behold. Living with this version of the Kents had made him grow up a different man.

"Yes," Clark said.

"I knew it," Alexander said. "Dad! You said that I just remembered things wrong. You said that it was just another meteor but that it was shaped funny. I knew that I saw it!"

"Okay, Son," Jonathan said. "Clark. What you have to know before I let Alex indulge himself is that he is adopted. Alex really is Lionel Luthor's son, just like you say that he is in your world."

Clark heard the way that Jonathan had phrased the sentence so as not to admit that he believed any of it.

"I was nine when the meteors fell," Alexander said. "Lionel Luthor was here in Smallville looking at some land that he would later develop into a factory. I ran away from him to hide when the shower started. One of them passed so closely over my head that it burned all of my hair off. It never grew back."

"Martha and I were driving home from town," Jonathan said. One of the meteors fell just a few yards from the truck and knocked us off of the road. When I came to, we were in a hospital room."

"But what Dad didn't know was that Lionel found him and Mom lying there. And that right next to the truck was a small pod, just big enough for a small child to fit inside. There was a baby inside of it. I came out of my hiding place and I watched as my father gave up his search for me and climbed down into the ditch to retrieve the child. He pulled Mom and Dad from the wrecked truck, loaded the pod into the bed, and drove away."

"He left you there?" Clark asked.

"Lionel Luthor was a very opportunistic man," Alexander said. "He had always seen me as being somewhat of a weak child that needed to be toughened. He saw this alien baby as an opportunity. Just what his plans were, I don't know."

Clark decided to wait until later to tell what this world's Lionel Luthor was doing in the mansion's cellar.

"Anyway," Alexander continued. "I ran down the road and called the police. They came and got Mom and Dad and sent them to the hospital. They figured out who I was and sent me home to Metropolis."

"There was a whole ordeal about Lionel abandoning Alex," Jonathan said. "It's been so long that most people don't even remember. The state took him from Lionel."

"He didn't have the lawyers and judges in his back pocket that he does now," Alexander added.

"A couple of years later, Martha and I were allowed to adopt him."

"How was he able to adopt Lucas if you were taken from him?" Clark asked.

"I don't think Lucas' adoption was ever really legal," Alexander said. "He went through some back doors using his company's money. But, that's how Lucas Luthor came to be."

"And it's how Alexander came to be our son," Jonathan added.

"Which means that if you and Lucas are parallel counterparts," Alexander said.

"That I came to Earth in a meteor shower as well," Clark finished. "Yeah, I did. Only, in my world it was the Kents that found me and adopted me. Lionel found you and took you home. You grew up to be one of the richest men in the world."

"But I never really got to know Lucas," Alexander said. "Where are you from? Is there anything different about you?"

Clark smiled. "You'll have to forgive me, Alexander," Clark said. "In my world, Lex Luthor is not the kind of guy that you tell your secrets to. If he found out what I was, he would exploit me."

"You don't have to worry about that from Alexander," Martha Kent said as she came back into the room with a tray covered in coffee mugs. They all took one. "He's the most trustworthy person in the world. Why else would a girl like Lana Lang want to marry him?"

"Lana?" Clark asked. He turned back to Alexander. "You're marrying Lana?"

"Yes, I am," Alexander said. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"No," Clark said. "It's just that, you're about to marry her in my world, too."

"Really?" Jonathan asked. "Well, then I guess its fate."

"Clark," Alexander said as he set down his coffee. "Seriously, you can trust me. Tell me about yourself."

"Well," Clark said. "I do have some abilities. I'm stronger and faster than a human being and I have superior sight and hearing. There are some other things, but right now I barely have the strength to hold this coffee mug."

"What happened that made you so weak?" Martha asked.

"It was the device that the professor used to send me here," Clark said. "It uses a meteor rock to create an energy beam. Meteor rocks are the remains of my home world. When they're on Earth they give off an energy that makes me weak and could possibly kill me. The beam corrupted my cells. I feel a little better than I did when I got here, but I don't know how I'm going to find Chloe unless I can stand for more than a few minutes."

"Chloe?" Alexander asked. "Chloe Sullivan?"

"Do you know where she is?" Clark asked.

"Well, yeah," Alexander said. "She's a friend of Lana's. She works at the Talon. She's dating Lucas."

Clark's heart sank. "I think we're talking about two different people. I'm looking for the Chloe from my universe. She's over here somewhere. At least, the professor thinks that she is. I'm supposed to be looking for her, but it's just been one thing after another since I got here."

"Well," Jonathan said. "If everything that you're saying is true, then she would probably try and find someone that she knew."

"Do you think that Lana knows who she really is?" Clark asked.

"She would have told me," Alexander replied. Then he looked up as if something had just dawned on him. "But she did say something last night about Chloe and Lois having a cousin in town for a visit. She said her name was Pam or Patty or something. I didn't really pay that much attention. She was upset because Lucas is closing the Talon."

"That's not surprising," Jonathan said. "Anyway, if your Chloe is posing as their cousin, then we need to find our Chloe and Lois."

"We?" Clark asked. "No offense, sir. But I didn't think you were going to help me."

"That was when I thought that your last name was Luthor," Jonathan replied. "If some other version of me raised you, then I guess I have some kind of parental obligation to help you."

Clark smiled. He had missed his father so much. But he did not really understand the gap that had been left in his life by his passing until he saw him standing there in the flesh. He would have embraced the man if he did not think that it would seem strange.

"Thank you, Mr. Kent," he said.

"Call me Jonathan," he replied.

Martha forced Clark to sit at the kitchen table and eat something while Jonathan and Alexander ran off into another room to get themselves ready to leave. She sat down next to him and watched him eat a ham sandwich. He looked up at her and she smiled.

"You have a hearty appetite," she said.

"I have a high metabolism," he replied. "In my world, you could barely keep enough food in the house for me when I was growing up."

"I'll bet," Martha laughed. Her look became serious again and Clark could tell that there was something that she wanted to ask him.

"Is there something wrong?" he asked.

"I've just been thinking about what you said earlier," she said. "When you said that your father died a while back?"

"He had a heart attack," Clark said again.

She nodded. "Jonathan's doctor doesn't like the way his heart has been acting. Is this something that's going to happen to us?"

"I don't know," he replied. "My dad was confronted by Lionel Luthor. He had figured out my secret and was threatening to expose me. They got into a fight and it was too much for his heart."

"So, you blame Lionel for his death?" Martha asked.

"I did," Clark said. "But some things have changed. I really don't know what to think of the Lionel in my world anymore. But I will tell you this. The Lionel of this world is evil. He's trying to exploit his son's abilities for his own gain. Jonathan's ideas about the Luthors are pretty much correct. You all need to stay away from them, especially if one of them is a Kryptonian."

Martha nodded as the two other men came back into the room.

"Are you ready, Clark?" Jonathan asked. Clark stuffed the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth and nodded.

"There's a good chance that anyone we see is going to think that you're Lucas," Alexander said. "Do you think that you could pass as him?"

"I've hung out with Lex enough to know how to talk like a Luthor," Clark said. "I'm not exactly dressed like one."

"Don't worry about that," Alexander replied. "Your face is all of the disguise that you'll need. If we get asked any questions, we're going to tell people that Dad's thinking about selling the farm to LuthorCorp. You're taking us to lunch to discuss it."

"Okay," Clark said. Jonathan said goodbye to Martha and she told everyone to be careful. The turned and stepped out of the front door.

That was when they heard a loud crash, like the sound of a car slamming into a solid wall at full speed.

"That sounded like a car accident," Jonathan said.

"It had to be a bad one if we could hear it all the way from the highway," Alexander said.

Almost before he finished his sentence, they heard the explosion. It was so loud that it rattled the windows of the farm house. Martha screamed and pointed at a plume of fire and smoke that rose up over the trees about a half of a mile away.

"Let's get in the truck," Jonathan said. "Clark, we'll have to find your friend later."

"I think she'll understand," he said as he climbed into the bed of the old pickup. He recognized it as the same one that he had been in when it exploded a couple of years before. Jonathan and Alexander piled into the cab and they peeled off down the dirt road toward the highway.

They were almost there when Jonathan suddenly slammed on the brakes, throwing Clark forward into the back of the cab. The two men in front climbed out of the truck and Clark jumped down to join them, trying to ignore the dizziness that still plagued him. He saw what had made Jonathan stop so suddenly. There were two young women running toward them. One of them had a cast on her arm and both of them were a bloody mess.

"That looks like Lois Lane," Alexander said. "The other one looks a lot like…"

"Chloe!" Clark yelled. He ran as fast as he could, still nothing like his old self, and reached her just in time for her to collapse into his arms.

Jonathan grabbed Lois. She had a huge gash across her forehead that was spilling blood all over her. Clark could not get his x-ray vision to work enough to see the extent of their injuries. But the way that Chloe was holding her arm he would say that she had broken hurt it pretty badly, in addition to whatever caused it to be in a cast in the first place.

"It's him!" Lois screamed. She pointed at Clark. "He killed Chloe! He's going to kill us all!"

But Chloe was a lot calmer as she looked into his eyes.

"Clark?" she said, almost as if she were about to pass out. "Is it really you?"

"Chloe," he replied. "Are you alright?"

"I knew that you'd come for me," she said. "You always come for me."

The last thing that she heard before she lost consciousness was Clark telling her that everything would be okay. And she knew that if he said it, then it had to be the truth.

End of chapter eight.

Thank you so much for all of the nice things that you guys have said about my story. I'm so glad that you're enjoying it. My worst fear when I wrote the first chapter was that you wouldn't like it. Or even worse, that it had already been done. I'm new to the site and I've read a lot of fics, but nowhere near the amount that are available. I've taken some of your advice and started reading a couple that you suggested and I'll put up some reviews when I've finished them.

Thank you again for taking time out of your day to read my story.

Kal-El2k7


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Chloe opened her eyes and winced at the pain in her arm. There was also a pain shooting through her head. She reached up and felt a bandage on the back of her head and she jerked at the pain that she felt.

"Chloe."

She looked around the room and found the owner of the voice.

"Clark," she said. "I thought that I'd been dreaming."

"It's not a dream," Clark said. "You're okay. You broke your arm again and you hit your head. You've got a slight concussion. That's why you passed out."

"What about the other me?" Chloe asked.

"Lois said that she didn't make it out of the car," Clark said. "There's nothing left of it, Chloe. She's gone." He gave her a moment as she stared out of the window in sadness. It had to be hard to find out that a version of yourself had been killed.

"Where's Lois?" she asked.

"She's fine," Clark said. "She busted her head pretty good. She's been going on to the nurses about being chased by Lucas and that he has super powers, but they just think that she hit her head too hard. Chloe, what happened?"

"Have you heard about your counterpart that lives in this universe?" Chloe asked.

"Yeah," Clark replied. "He was raised by Lionel Luthor. What about him?"

"I sort of let on that I knew his secret," Chloe said. "Don't look at me like that, Clark. I've never had anything like this happen to me before."

"What happened?" Clark said, a little perturbed. Chloe should have known better than to trust a Luthor, no matter whose face he was wearing.

"Well," Chloe said. "Evidently, I know more about where the two of you come from than he does. Lionel must have kept all of it secret from him all of these years. He just thinks that he's some sort of freak of nature."

"Lionel Luthor found his pod," Clark said. "In our world he found my parents later on. But here, they were out cold and he just took the baby and the truck and left them for dead. He probably saw it as a huge cash cow."

"But he didn't cash in on it?" Chloe asked.

"Not immediately," Clark said. "He is now, though. He's been taking DNA from Lucas for years. I think he's cloning him. He's trying to make soldiers with my abilities."

"My god," Chloe said. "Can you imagine? This world is so different from ours. And that's really the only thing that I can pinpoint where the difference occurred. Lionel Luthor found you and raised you. You grew up to be a billionaire troublemaker. I was a goth chick with a chip on my shoulder. Lois is not nearly as fearless as I remember. Lionel is even more diabolical than he is back home. Your dad is alive."

"Lex is his son," Clark added.

"What?" Chloe asked.

"It's a long story," Clark said. "Chloe, you make it sound as if all of those lives turned out different just because of who found my pod."

"That's what I'm trying to say, Clark," Chloe said. "You've affected all of those lives." She smiled. "It's a wonderful life, huh?"

Clark blushed, though Chloe did not see it. He did not know if he could believe what she said. The people close to him were very important to him, but he found it very hard to believe that their lives would be so different without him.

Although, to be honest, not everyone's lives looked all that bad here. He had to admit that the Kent household had looked just the same without him as it had with him. Only here, not only was Lex living a life without being scrutinized by an overzealous father, but his mother was not having to tend to the hectic schedule of a state senator. The worst part of all was seeing that if he had not been in the Kents' lives, his father would still be alive.

"Well," he said as he sat in the chair next to the bed. "We don't have to worry about any of that. This is their world. And, now that I've found you, we can go back to our's."

"Clark," Chloe said. "The Chloe from this world is dead because of things that I set into motion. We can't just leave these people to the wrath of Lucas Luthor."

"Chloe, nobody will be able to stop him if he goes into some sort of a rampage," Clark replied.

"What do you mean?" Chloe said. "You're exactly the same as him. You have all of his powers. You're an even match."

"Not anymore, we're not," Clark said.

Chloe looked him in the eye. "What are you talking about?" Then the sudden realization of what he meant hit home for her. "Clark! How did you get here?"

"The same way you did," Clark said. "Professor Hamilton's machine."

"Clark! That projector hit me with a blast of pure Kryptonite energy," Chloe said. "It's a wonder that it didn't turn me into an instant meteor freak. But that could have killed you!"

"Hamilton shielded me with a lead apron," Clark said. "It filtered a lot of the energy, but it corrupted my cells."

"You've lost your abilities?" Chloe asked.

Clark nodded. "They're not completely lost. I still have some of them, but they're not as strong as they ought to be."

"Is it permanent?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I got here sometime yesterday afternoon, but I think that I was in some kind of coma when I came through. A bunch of lab workers found me at LuthorCorp this morning. Since then I've only gotten strong enough to use my abilities once. After that, I get so dizzy when I stand that I feel as though I'll fall over."

"Well, how do you plan to get home?" Chloe said. "Another trip like that could kill you."

"I don't know," Clark said. "We'll just have to do it and see what happens."

"And what about Lucas?" Chloe asked.

"I told you," Clark said. "I can't fight him. I'll Alexander Kent all of the information that I can on him. He's a writer. He's a lot like you, actually. He's into the whole meteor freak thing." He got up and walked to the door. "Get some rest. I'm going to go talk to the Kents. Then I'll talk with your doctor about getting you out of here."

Chloe promised that she would rest and he stepped out into the hallway. There he found Alexander leaning against the wall and holding two sodas.

"How is she?" he asked.

"Talkative," Clark replied. "I'm just glad that I found her. Hamilton had me thinking that her DNA was scattered all over the universe."

"I think that it's called the multiverse in that context," Alexander said with a smile as he handed one of the sodas to Clark. "I was wondering if we could talk."

"Sure," Clark said, taking the drink. They began to walk down the corridor. "What about?"

"Well, I was hoping that you'd tell me some more about your Earth," Alexander said. "Really, I want to hear about me."

"I've had a pretty complicated relationship with Lex Luthor," Clark replied. "We used to be friends."

"How did you meet?" Alexander asked.

"I saved his life," Clark said.

Alexander laughed. "You really are the heroic type. Aren't you?"

"He was driving way too fast across the bridge," Clark said. "He hit me and we both went into the water. I pulled him from the car. He never really saw me do anything, but he started to suspect my abilities from that day. His obsession with my secret has done nothing but put a wedge between us that's been getting bigger for years."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Alexander said. "I can't say that my relationship with Lucas is any better. Actually, I'm not even sure if he knows that we have the same father. I'd hate to think that there couldn't be any world out there where you and I could just be friends."

"Maybe it just takes a crossing of worlds to find the two versions of us that could get along," Clark said.

"You and I aren't so different," Alexander said. "We're both adopted. We were both raised on a farm. And we've both recently discovered that another version of ourselves was raised by a Lionel Luthor."

Clark smiled. "You remind me of the way Lex used to be," Clark said. "When we were friends."

"I'm glad of that," Alexander said.

They rounded the corner and saw Jonathan and Martha Kent sitting together on a waiting room sofa. They had not seen them come and were busy whispering to one another and laughing.

"Alex," Clark said. "I will give you one bit of advice if you're going to be living as a Kent. Your father is one of the most brilliant and humble men that I have ever known. Always take his advice. And always know that he would do anything to protect his family. Even if it means giving his own life."

"You know, Clark," Alexander said. "I know what you're thinking."

"Really?" Clark asked. "What's that?"

"You think that he lived in this world because you weren't here," he replied.

"Doesn't that make sense?" Clark asked. "Lionel Luthor confronted my dad because of me. That's how he died."

"Yeah, Clark," Alexander said. "But there are billions of universes out there. He could be dead in some and he could be alive in others. They can't all be your fault. If he hadn't died that night he would have died another time. Who's to say that my dad won't die doing something for me? I would give my life to protect those that I care about. Wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would," Clark said.

"Now," Alexander said. "What's your plan?"

"Well, I can't face Lucas," Clark said. "I'm too weak. All that I can do is tell you about his weakness."

"Lucas has a weakness?" Alexander asked.

"Yeah," Clark said. "Kryptonite. It's in the meteor rocks. That's what caused me to lose my powers when I crossed over. When Chloe and I are gone, that'll be your only defense against him."

"And what do you need for that?" Alexander replied.

"For what?" Clark asked.

"For Chloe and you to get out of here?"

"I guess a way to get to Metropolis," Clark said. "Hamilton is in Luthor's back pocket in this world. I'll have to get to LuthorCorp and find someone else who knows how to use his equipment."

"I can take you to Metropolis," Alexander said.

"Really?" Clark asked. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I am," he replied. "You and I were raised by different versions of the same parents. In a way that kind of makes us brothers. And I'd do anything for family."

They laughed as they walked down the hall toward the Kents.

Lionel Luthor had lain on the floor of the mansion's cellar for hours. He had faded in and out of conscious thought as his broken body lay there, limp and helpless. He could not move of his own will. And he could not gather the strength to call for help.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Emil Hamilton had come back. He had peered down into the hole in the floor upstairs to find Luthor lying below. He had called to him, but Luthor could not hear him. Evidently, Hamilton had called an ambulance because he now found himself lying in a bed at Smallville Medical Center. A barrage of doctors, nurses, and police officers had treated him and asked him a thousand questions about what had occurred. And he had already had to have three reporters thrown from his room. Finally, he was alone.

He turned his head so as not to have to look out the window that peered into the corridor. Someone had been careless and left the blinds open. People tended to look in at him as they passed. He felt like an animal in a display case as citizens of Smallville gawked at the billionaire that had been attacked and left for dead.

The worst part of all of it was that he knew deep in his heart that he had deserved it.

The heavens had looked down and chosen him to receive this child from another world. And all that he had been able to think about was what he could gain from it. He had taken the child in as his own, and in the process he had lost his real son. Then, instead of raising the boy to have good and moral values, he had taught him his own habits of greed and betrayal. And to top it all off he had exploited the abilities that he had been blessed with.

"Oh, Lucas," Lionel Luthor said as the weight of all that he had done settled on his heart. "I'm sorry." Only reaching a moment close to death had been enough to make him see the treachery that he had been a part of.

And then there was Alexander, his son that had been taken from him. Why had he chosen to leave him behind when he had found that pod? He did not know. He supposed that some diabolical part of him had never seen the boy as being as strong as he. And so he had made a trade. This child from the stars for the one that had been a disappointment.

He wished that Lucas had killed him.

He turned over in his bed and momentarily cautioned a glance out of the window. And there he saw him. It was Lucas. He was walking down the hallway talking to another young man. A man with no hair.

"Alexander?" he called quietly. "Lucas?"

It was both of his sons. Then he looked more closely at Lucas. He could see his blue eyes all the way from over here. There was a kindness in his eyes that had never belonged to a man by the name of Luthor.

"Clark!" he whispered. He lifted one of his broken arms and waved. Clark and Alexander looked in the window at him. They both scowled. He had expected it, but still he waved. He made a beckoning motion with his arm and the two younger men looked at one another. Alexander shook his head and continued down the hallway. Clark looked after him and then turned to go into the room.

The door opened and Clark stepped inside. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Clark," Luthor said. "Please. I have to speak to you."

"I think that you said all that you need to say back at the mansion," Clark replied.

"I've been a fool," Luthor said. "Lucas tried to kill me, and I can't say that I blame him."

Clark was taken aback. "Lucas did this to you?"

Luthor nodded. "After you escaped. He's gone wild. He found out what I've been doing to him all of these years."

"He also found out about the secret that you've kept from him," Clark added. "Why didn't you ever tell him where he was from? Why didn't you ever let him see his pod?"

"That crazy thing?" Luthor asked. "After the voice of someone named Jor-El started coming out of it and it led me to a cave full of old hieroglyphics I had it hidden."

"That cave leads to the fortress," Clark said. "There are a lot of answers to be gotten there. You don't understand. When Lucas came here, it unfolded a series of events that he's supposed to be a part of. Without him there could be any number of bad guys that could cause some pretty serious damage. There's Fines and Zod. And not to mention all of the meteor freaks in the area."

"I know all of that, Clark," Luthor said. "I made a grave error in denying Lucas the upbringing that his biological parents intended for him. You were fortunate to have parents that saw fit to be completely honest with you. And your world is better for it."

Clark looked at the man. This was not the same Lionel Luthor that had tried to kill him earlier in the day. This man was a lot like his counterpart had been after his encounter with Jor-El.

"Where is Lucas now?" Clark asked.

"I don't know," Luthor replied. "I was hoping that you did."

"He attacked Lois and Chloe," Clark said. "The Chloe from this world was killed."

"Lucas killed her?" Luthor asked. Clark nodded. "But, I though that he loved her."

"Not enough to stop his vengeance," Clark said. "Something in him has snapped. He's determined to kill anyone who crosses him."

"And then he'll take over the world," Luthor said. "I've always known that it was in his mind. And I believe that he could do it. He could probably destroy entire armies with his bare hands." He looked at Clark. "You have to stop him, son."

"I can't fight him," Clark said. "I lost most of my powers when I crossed over."

"I know you did," Luthor said. "And I've thought about that."

"I'm listening," Clark said.

"For the last several years, Professor Hamilton and I have been working on an experiment to recreate the powers of Lucas," Luthor said. "When he was still a child we were able to make a clone of his body, but it is lifeless. We've been extracting his blood, little by little. And by doing some comparative studies with human samples and meteor rocks, we've been able to make a serum."

"What sort of serum?" Clark asked.

"I don't know all of the technical words that Hamilton does," Luthor said. "Basically, it condenses everything that is unique in Kryptonian DNA and uses it to enhance human DNA."

"So, if you were to give it to a human it would duplicate my abilities?" Clark asked.

"Temporarily," Luthor said. "But the clones are Kryptonian in origin. We think that the effects of the serum would be permanent in them."

"So, it would kind of recharge me?" Clark asked.

Luthor nodded. "Hamilton's gone back to the mansion. Go and find him and tell him what I've told you. He'll know what to do. And then you have to find Lucas."

Clark turned and headed toward the door. "I guess I should thank you," he said.

"No," Luthor said. "You shouldn't have to. If I had done my job in the first place, you wouldn't have to do your's now. But I will ask you one favor, if you don't mind."

"What is it?" Clark asked.

"Please," Luthor said. "Don't kill him."

Clark shook his head. "I'm not a murderer, Mr. Luthor."

With that, Clark turned and left the room. Lionel Luthor began to weep.

Clark continued down the hallway toward where Alexander was waiting with his parents.

"What happened to him?" Alexander asked.

"Lucas tried to kill him," Clark said. "He wants to help us."

"How?" Jonathan asked.

"He says that Hamilton has a serum that might give me back my abilities," Clark replied. "If it works, then I might be able to stop him before anyone else gets hurt."

"Or I could stop you from getting to Hamilton."

They all turned to find an exact duplicate of Clark standing in the middle of the hallway. He was wearing clothes similar to Clark's usual attire, but a little too tight. And the look in his eyes was as wild as fire.

"Lucas," Clark said.

"At last we meet, Kent," Lucas replied. "And from what I can hear, it sounds like you and my father are plotting against me."

"We just don't want anyone to get hurt," Clark said.

"Well," Lucas replied. "We don't always get what we want."

He shot forward and slammed into Clark, sending them both crashing through a door and into a patient's room. The man inside screamed. Lucas sat up and looked down at Clark. He was blinking and shaking his head as he lay on the floor. Lucas brought up his fist.

Jonathan pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall and nailed Lucas on the back of the head with it. The jolt vibrated up his arms and he dropped the object as Lucas stood up and turned to him. He grabbed Jonathan by his neck and tossed him nearly the entire length of the corridor. Martha screamed and Alexander went running to see about his father.

"Lucas!" Clark yelled. "You may kill me, but I won't back down from you."

"The Kents have made you stupid," Lucas replied. He stepped toward Clark.

As Lucas and Clark faced each other down the hall, Alexander leaned over his father. Jonathan slowly opened his eyes.

"That was stupid, Dad," Alexander said. Jonathan laughed. Then, a panicked look crossed over his face and his face turned red. "Doctor?" Alexander said.

A woman in a white coat leaned over Jonathan.

"He's having a heart attack," she said. "Let's get him to the ER!"

Alexander stood beside his mother and watched as they put his father on a gurney and wheeled him away. Then he turned and saw Lucas punch Clark with all of his might and send him flying into a wall.

"Alex?" He turned and saw Lana coming in the door behind him. "What's going on? I heard that Lois and Chloe were in a car accident?"

Just then, Clark rushed Lucas and placed his shoulder right into his stomach. Alexander knew that he would not have the strength to keep that up. He had to find a way to get him out of here and to the mansion.

End of chapter nine.

Another long chapter! But I hoped you enjoyed it. It will most likely be Monday before I can get chapter 10 posted. So, keep those reviews coming.

Also, ten points goes to anyone who can tell me who Professor Emil Hamilton is in the DC universe!

Thanks,

Kal-El2k7


	10. Chapter 10

I'm sorry it took so long to get chapter ten posted. It's been a busy weekend. My computer at home is on the fritz, so I couldn't even write the chapter, much less post it.

This chapter is not quite as long. But I hope you enjoy it.

On with the show.

Chapter Ten

The car exploded into a huge ball of fire. The flames pushed out and up and swept over him. He did not feel any pain, but his clothes caught fire and rapidly burned off of him. He turned back to the car and looked inside. Through the smoke and fire, he could see that Chloe had not been able to get out. She was dead.

He hung his head. His violent rage had cost him the only person that he had ever cared about. He guessed that he had loved her in the only way that he knew how. He had never really experienced what real love was. But he had feelings for her.

He had known that she was in the car, but his anger had put a cloud over his mind. All he could think about was that other girl. The one that had called herself Patty but was really a version of Chloe from another world. She had come to his world and messed up his whole life. Before she had come he had been Lucas Luthor, and extraordinary business man and aire to the throne of LuthorCorp. Before she came he had had a secret that only his father had known about.

Now things were different. The fact that he was one of the richest and most powerful men in the world was second to his secret. He had found out that these abilities that he had were not merely the result of living in this weird town. They were much more than that. He had found out that he was from another planet called Krypton or something. And the meteor shower that hit Smallville back in the eighties was what had brought him here.

Possibly the worst thing that he found out was that the only man that he had trusted to keep his secret had betrayed him. No, Lionel Luthor did not go around telling everyone that his son was an alien. But he had decided to secretly take his blood and play Frankenstein with his DNA. For that betrayal, Lucas knew that his father must die. He was at a sensitive place where any kind of mercy would be seen as weakness. He could use his powers to rule, but he had to squash anyone who opposed him. That would include his father and this other Chloe.

"I'm sorry, Chloe," he said to the corpse that had burned beyond recognition inside the car. Then he stepped out of the flames. His clothes had now completely burned away, leaving him naked. He looked over the side of the bridge and down a dirt road that was adjacent to this one. He saw Lois Lane and the other Chloe talking with some men by a pickup truck. He focused on them and his telescopic vision brought them into focus. Two of the men were Jonathan and Alexander Kent. His father had been trying to buy their farm for months.

He gasped as he saw the other man. It was him! He could see a tall man with his own face standing down there and holding Chloe in his arms. He climbed into the bed of the truck and lay the girl down. Lucas had no doubt that this was the version of himself from the other Chloe's world. And if he had abilities like he did, then he would most likely be a worthy opponent.

He waited until the others had gotten themselves into the truck before he climbed over the side of the bridge and dropped into the water. As the vehicle pulled out onto the highway, he knew that they would stop to look at the wreckage. He did not want to be standing there in the nude while they did so. When they had pulled away he swam to the shore in a flash. Then, faster than anyone would have been able to see, he ran down the old dirt road to the Kent home.

Martha Kent was climbing into her car. Obviously, she was going to meet the others at the hospital. He ran to the barn and hid inside until she had pulled away. Then he went into the house. Inside, he found some of Jonathan Kent's work clothes. They fit him, but they were a little snug. But it was enough to keep him from sticking out. He would most likely look more like this farm boy version of himself that he had just seen.

After he had put on the clothes he ran out the door. He was halfway to the hospital before the door closed behind him.

He made it all the way to Smallville Medical Center in two minutes. He stopped running about a quarter of a mile away so that he could casually walk in without getting noticed. He looked around as he stepped into the lobby. He saw no sign of the Kents. That was just as well. He would rather them think that he was not immediately coming after them. He would stand back and wait for the right opportunity to strike.

He sat in one of the chairs of the waiting area. It was nearly fifteen minutes before he finally saw his counterpart come inside. He was carrying Chloe in his arms. Seeing the girls face brought so many conflicting and confusing feelings to his mind. He felt hatred at the trouble that he had caused. But at the same time he felt sorrow for having killed the woman that he thought that he loved. He picked up a magazine and held it in front of his face. He watched as Alexander Kent brought in Lois Lane. A nurse helped them get through a door and took them to the ER.

Lucas got up and followed. He stayed far enough away so as not to attract their attention. He watched as the doctors treated the girls' wounds and as they were taken to separate rooms upstairs. Then he watched as Clark went into Chloe's room and the Kents went down the hall to a waiting area. When he was sure that they were all gone, he silently ducked into Lois' room.

She was asleep. But she stirred as he sat down in a chair next to her bed. After a minute she opened her eyes. Lucas saw the panic in her face.

"Please, Ms. Lane," Lucas said. "Do yourself a favor and don't scream."

Lois nodded and sat up in the bed. Dizziness swept over her and she nearly fell over.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"There are two people in the room across the hall that interests me very much," Lucas said. "I want you to tell me what you know about my counterpart."

"I'm not talking to you," Lois said. "You killed Chloe. And you tried to kill me." Lucas stood up and stepped closer to the bed. "Go ahead and do what you want. I'm about to scream for help."

"I assure you that I would be gone before you had even parted your lips," Lucas said.

"Yeah," Lois said. "I saw what happened to you on that bridge. And there isn't even a scratch on you. No one here will believe me but I know what I saw."

"Go ahead and keep telling everyone about my abilities," Lucas said. "My job will be a lot easier if they lock you up." He leaned over her and rested his hand gently on her throat. "Tell me about my counterpart."

"I didn't even realize your counterpart was here," Lois said. She was trembling, but she held her voice steady. "I thought that was you and the Kent farm. I guess Chloe was right about his being a good guy. He saved us."

"Does he have my abilities?" Lucas asked. "Is he as powerful as I am?"

"I don't know," Lois replied. "I saw him for two seconds and then I was out."

"You're being of no use to me," Lucas said. "I feel some remorse for killing your cousin. But I've never liked you."

Lois did not have time to scream as Lucas placed a hand over her mouth and nose. She struggled to get free. But she was no match for his strength. After a few seconds she stopped moving and her hands fell limply to her sides. Lucas pulled his hand back and smiled at her as she lay there. She looked as if she were sleeping.

He stepped out of her room and walked casually down the hall. The doctors and nurses did not notice him as they rushed into Lois' room to answer the alarms that were going off. He passed Chloe's room and saw that she was alone. The farm boy was gone. He kept walking until he rounded a corner. At the end of the hall he saw the Kents. He ducked back behind the wall before they noticed him. He turned to walk the other way when he happened to glance in the window in front of him. He was looking into a room where he saw his father lying in a bed. At the foot of his bed he saw the other version of himself. He tuned in his ears to hear what was being said.

_Luthor:…you have to find my Lucas._

_Clark:I guess I should thank you._

_Luthor:You shouldn't have to. If I had done my job in the first place, you wouldn't have to do your's now. But I will ask you one favor, if you don't mind._

_Clark:What is it?_

_Luthor:Please, don't kill him._

"Don't kill me?" Lucas said to himself. He saw Clark coming toward the door and raced away before he was seen. He watched as the farm boy headed down the hall toward the Kents. He listened to their words. He heard their plan to go back to the mansion and get Hamilton to give Clark some sort of serum that he and his father had concocted. He shot forward just as Clark was saying that he had to stop him before anyone else got hurt. He smiled. "Or I could stop you from getting to Hamilton."

"Alex? What's going on? I heard that Lois and Chloe were in a car accident."

Alexander turned away from Lana and saw Clark rush Lucas. He placed his shoulder into his stomach and knocked him through a wall. He knew that he would not have the strength to keep this up for long.

"Mr. Kent!" a nurse called. "We're taking your father to the ER!"

"I'll be there in a minute," Alexander said. The nurse shrugged and trotted away down the hall.

"Is that Lucas?" Lana asked as Lucas Luthor emerged from the wall. His clothes were torn and there was a thin trickle of blood coming from his lip. A second later, Clark emerged as well. His clothes were not in as bad of shape, but his face was almost completely covered in blood. "Oh my god."

"It's a long story, Lana," Alexander said. "There is a lot going on right now." He looked down at her and noticed something that he had not seen in a long time. "You're wearing your necklace?"

"Yes," she said, putting a hand on it. "I had it put away for a long time. But something just told me this morning to put it on."

He nodded. "I need it."

"What?" Lana asked.

"Please," Alexander said. "Trust me. I need your necklace."

Lana reached beneath her dark hair and unclasped the chain. She took the small green stone and let it drop into his hand.

Alexander looked back down the hall where the two duplicates had nearly torn out every wall. He held up the small piece of jewelry.

"Clark!" he yelled. Clark looked at him as he threw the necklace with all of his might. It went sailing through the air and Clark caught it.

Clark caught the glistening stone as it came to him. He held it up and realized that it was a small piece of a meteor rock. He could see the veins in his hand and felt the familiar weakness drain him of what little energy he had left. He looked at Alexander. Was he more like Lex than he had thought.

"Give it to him!" the man was yelling.

Clark turned and saw Lucas flying toward him, his mouth open in a scream. He took the stone and shoved it into his mouth as he came. He plowed into him and they both went down.

Clark felt a little better. The meteor rock's effects had let up on him. But, as he looked down at Lucas writhing on the floor, he saw that he was just beginning to fee them. He reached down and pulled the Luthor version of himself up by the back of his shirt. He pulled back his fist and let it smash into the man's jaw. Lucas soared back at least twenty feet into a wall. A huge piece of the ceiling came crashing down on him.

Clark collapsed. Right away he sensed Alexander and Lana as they pulled him up and helped him get down the hallway.

"Where's your dad?" Clark gasped.

"He's in the ER," Alexander said. "He's having a heart attack."

"He was trying to help me," Clark said.

"Don't think about it," Alexander replied.

"You go to him," Clark said. They were far enough away that he could walk on his own. "I can get to the mansion on my own."

"Dad would want me to help you," Alexander said.

"I don't know what's going on here or who you are," Lana said. "But you don't need to go anywhere. You're in the hospital."

They were standing outside Lois' room. Clark noticed a nurse that was pulling a sheet over her head. He pulled the door open and the nurse saw him. She pointed at him and screamed.

"That's him!" she said. "That's the man that killed Ms. Lane!"

"Oh god!" Lana cried.

Clark reached across the hall and pulled the door to Chloe's room open. She looked up at him.

"I heard a lot of commotion," she said. "Is everything alright?"

"No," Clark said. "And it's going downhill, fast." He snatched the IV from her arm and scooped her up. All four of them ran away down the hall toward the elevator.

Lucas lay beneath the slabs of concrete and plaster. He was weak. He could barely move his arms; much less could he pick up any of the debris that was lying on him. The meteor stone was still in his mouth. There was a chunk of metal that sat on his face, keeping him from spitting out the object.

_You haven't won yet, Clark,_ he thought to himself. _I know where you're going._

End of chapter ten.


	11. Chapter 11

I hope you guys are still reading. I only got one review for chapter 10. I know that it was kind of risky for Lucas to kill Lois, and I deal with that a bit in this chapter. But, regardless…on with the show.

Chapter Eleven

Lana's car pulled silently up to the curb. They were about a quarter of a mile from the mansion. Clark knew that he could get inside without being noticed by the guards, but he did not want to risk having the car get any closer.

"Are you sure that you're alright?" Chloe asked as they climbed out of the car. She came around to Clark's side and looked up at him. "You're bleeding."

"It's just a cut," Clark said as he gently touched the side of his face. He still had blood running all the way down his neck and onto his shirt. "I'll be fine."

"Could someone please explain to me what is going on?" Lana said. She had been silent all the way from the hospital. Clark had seen her glancing at him in the rear view mirror as she raced toward the mansion. No one had told her why they were going.

"Lana, it's a long story," Alexander said as he got out of the car from the passenger's side. "And frankly, I don't think you'll believe it."

"Try me," Lana said. "I want to know why you two keep calling Patty by Chloe's name. And I want to know why there were two Lucases back at the hospital, one of which we had to take with us."

"Okay," Alexander said. "This is Clark Kent and Chloe Sullivan. They are from a parallel universe. They are the counterparts to Lucas Luthor and our Chloe."

Lana stared at them. Finally, she shook her head and glared at Alexander.

"You don't have to talk to me like an idiot, Alex," she said. "I think that if you're going to involve me, you should trust me."

"I am trusting you," Alexander said. "I'm telling you the truth."

"Think about it Lana," Chloe said. "You yourself said that it was amazing how much I looked like Chloe."

"But you're her identical cousin," Lana said.

"There's no such thing as identical cousins," Chloe said. "And even if there was, do you think that there could be two in the same town? Chloe's and Lucas'?"

"I really don't know," Lana said. "Where is the real Chloe?"

"She's dead," Clark said. "Lucas killed her. I don't know if he meant for her to die or not. But he murdered Lois."

"I always knew that Lucas was bad news," Alexander said. "But I had no idea that he was capable of murder."

"Lionel Luthor taught him to cover his tracks," Clark said. "And I think that he's losing his mind."

"Why do you think that?" Chloe asked.

"Lionel knew that Lucas could be powerful enough to rule the world if he wanted," Clark said. "And I think that in some ways, he was training him for that. He raised him to be calloused and uncaring. Even more so than Lex from our world. But at the same time, he was conducting experiments on him without him knowing about it."

"And when Lucas found out what Lionel was doing it made the uncaring part of him take over," Alexander said. "So now he's full of hate and rage and he doesn't care who gets hurt."

"Well, that means that he could have two weaknesses," Chloe said. They all turned to her. "I mean, there are always the meteor rocks. But we can't really use that without hurting Clark as well."

"What's the other?" Clark asked.

"His humanity," Chloe replied. "Clark, you are who you are because of the family that raised you. Look at the difference between Alexander and Lex. It's like night and day."

"But Lucas wasn't raised by the Kents," Alexander said. "The most he's had to do with my family is when he's tried to get dad to sell the farm."

"No," Clark said. "But back at the hospital, Lionel showed a lot of remorse for the way that he's treated Lucas. So even he has a shred of humanity."

"So maybe that shred is instilled somewhere inside Lucas," Alexander said. "Maybe we can bring that out."

"Wait a minute," Lana interrupted. "Look, Clark and Chloe can do whatever they want. You're going back to the hospital."

"What?" Alexander asked.

"Your dad just had a heart attack," she replied. "You've got to go back and make sure that he's alright."

"She's right, Alex," Clark said. "You've done enough for me. You saved my life twice."

"I'm not going anywhere," Alexander said. "My dad would understand. Clark, you barely have more strength than I do. If you hadn't shoved that rock in Lucas' mouth back there, he would have killed you."

"I know, Alex," Clark said. "And it's not out of the question that he could still kill me. But I know that I never got to say goodbye to my father. He was almost gone when I found him that night. Don't let the same thing happen to you."

Alexander nodded. "I'll go and see about him," he said. "What's your plan?"

"If this serum works I'm going to go back to the hospital and fight Lucas," Clark said. "If that meteor rock killed him, then I'm going to take Chloe and Professor Hamilton to LuthorCorp and I'm going home."

"Good luck, Mr. Kent," Alexander said as he put out his hand. Clark took it and smiled.

"Thanks, Mr. Kent," he replied. Then he pulled him in for an embrace. "I'll always remember you as a brother."

"Me, too," Alexander said. He turned around and faced Lana. "You got your wish. Let's go." They climbed into the car and drove away. Clark watched as the taillights grew smaller until they were gone.

"Can we trade him for our Lex?" Chloe asked.

"I wish," Clark replied.

The emergency room at Smallville Medical Center was packed full of people when Alexander and Lana stepped through the automatic door. A guard came up to them and waved a metal detecting wand over them on either side and nodded for them to go through. They looked around. There were people everywhere that had been injured during Clark's battle with Lucas.

"There wasn't this many people on the floor where they fought," Lana said.

"The ceiling collapsed," Alexander said. "There must have been people on the floor above us." He stepped over to the information desk and caught the attention of a nurse. "Excuse me. Could you tell me the condition of Jonathan Kent?"

The nurse tapped the name into a computer. "He's in room four. He's recovering."

"Is he alright?" Alexander asked. "I was told that he had a heart attack."

"It wasn't a heart attack," the nurse said. "It was an anxiety attack brought on by panic. There was a commotion upstairs a little while ago. Is it possible that he could have gotten himself involved in that?"

"It's possible," Alexander said. "May I see him?"

"Sure," she replied. "Go down the hall. He'll be in the second room on the right."

Alexander thanked the woman and headed toward his father's room. When he entered he found Jonathan lying on the bed, holding Martha's hand and whispering to her as she cried.

"Dad," Alexander said. He went in and hugged the man. Lana smiled and tried to blend in with the wall while they had their family moment. "The nurse said that you're okay."

"Yeah," Jonathan said. "I got lucky that time. My hands are still hurting from where I knocked Lucas with that fire extinguisher. I know that you said he was strong…but my god!"

"Mom," Alexander said. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Martha said as she dried her eyes with a tissue that she had in her palm.

"She's convinced that I'm going to die," Jonathan said. "She says that its destiny because of what Clark said."

"Clark's dad was under a lot more stress than he is, mom," Alexander said. "Trying to keep his secret from the Luthors is probably a grueling task."

"Where is Clark?" Jonathan asked.

"We took him to the mansion," Lana said from where she stood.

"He's going to try and find Hamilton," Alexander said. "He's got that serum that he was talking about."

Jonathan nodded. "What happened to Lucas?"

"Clark beat him," Alexander said. "At least for now. He's lying upstairs under a half ton of concrete with a meteor stone in his mouth."

"What does that mean?" Martha asked.

"That's their only weakness, Mom," Alexander said. "The meteor rocks are pieces of their world. The radiation that they give off makes them weak. It could kill them."

Lana stepped forward. "I've been listening to all of these nonsensical comments for an hour, Alex. Tell me what's going on."

"I told you, Lana," Alexander said. "Clark and Chloe…"

"I know about Clark and Chloe," Lana said. "But what is all of this about Lucas and the meteor rocks?"

"Oh," Alexander said. "Well, you'd better sit down."

The team of rescue workers finally got the hydraulic jack in position well enough that they were able to lift the biggest slab of concrete off of Lucas Luthor. He opened his eyes as he felt the pressure disappear from his chest and face. He realized what had happened. He turned his head, feeling as if he were going to vomit from the weak feeling that was washing over his body. He felt the stone, still inside his mouth. He spit it out as hard as he could and watched it fly down the hallway. Instantly, he felt the weakness fall off of him as if it had been a heavy coat.

The workers screamed and ran for cover as the pieces of concrete and plaster burst apart and was flung into the air. Lucas got up from his grave and shook the dust out of his hair as if he had merely been covered in some sort of powder.

"He's alive!" one of the men shouted. "And he doesn't even look hurt!"

"Call security!" someone else said. "He killed that woman down the hall!"

Lucas climbed down from the pile of rubble that he had been buried under. He watched as three men in uniform came running down the corridor. Before they got to him there were at least ten police officers that had come in from various other parts of the hospital. All of them faced him with their weapons drawn.

"Don't move, Mr. Luthor," one of them shouted. "You can't go anywhere! You're under arrest for the murders of Chloe Sullivan and Lois Lane!"

Lucas sent a blast of heat from his eyes and hit the man's gun. It grew too hot in his hands to hold and he dropped it. The other officers opened fire on him. The fired their weapons over and over. Lucas did not flinch. Finally, he blasted them with a gust of his breath, sending them sprawled out across the floor.

"Sorry, gentlemen," he said. "I really don't have time for this tonight." He fired another blast of heat at the window next to him and the glass melted away, leaving a huge hole that he started to climb through.

"Lucas!"

He turned at the sound of his father's voice and saw him sitting in the middle of the corridor in a wheelchair. The older man reached down and pushed the wheels a tiny bit to move himself forward.

"I was hoping you were dead," Lucas said.

"Why Lucas?" Lionel Luthor asked. "You're not a killer."

"Really?" Lucas replied. "I killed Chloe and her friend. I'd say that qualifies me for killer status."

"But you're not yourself, Son," Lionel said. "You've lost a part of yourself. This man that's committed these horrible acts today is not the same Lucas that lived in my house for so many years. That Lucas used to chase squirrels and climb trees."

"That was before you got your hooks into me," Lucas said through gritted teeth. "I used to be happy! Then you started trying to mold me into a carbon copy of you!"

"I made a mistake, Son," Lionel said. "I tried to make you business callous and I accidentally made you callous against life."

"That's not all that you did, Father!" Lucas screamed. "What about the experiments? What about the space ship and the meteor rocks? Why didn't you tell me any of it?"

"I'll tell you now," Lionel said. "What do you want to know?"

"Who am I?" Lucas asked.

"Your name was once Kal-El," Lionel said. "You are the only known survivor from the planet Krypton. It was destroyed a few years before I found you. Your father's name was Jor-El and your mother's name was Lara."

"How do you know?" Lucas asked.

"I still have the pod that brought you here," Lionel said. "I can show it to you. It has all of the answers that you need inside of it."

Lucas was shaking. He stared at his father. Finally, he was hearing some answers to the questions that he had been asking his entire life. He stepped forward. In his mind he could see himself going with his father to where ever it was that he kept the pod. And then he would turn himself in and answer for the things that he had done that day. He considered it.

He shook his head.

"It's too late, Father," he said. "My entire life has been nothing but a lie. I have a chance now to really make something of myself. More than just the future head of LuthorCorp. I can be a ruler. I can rule this nation. I could probably rule this planet if I wanted. That is probably what my parents wanted of me. They sent me to a world where I would have unimaginable powers so that I could be its ruler."

"Son," Lionel said. "You can't make people suffer so that you can have power."

"I won't make anyone suffer that doesn't stand in my way," Lucas said. "And right now, those two troublemakers from another world are in my way. Goodbye, Father."

Without another word Lucas climbed through the hole in the window and vanished. There was nothing visible now but the glow of the sun that had just disappeared beyond the horizon.

Lionel Luthor wept.

Alexander stepped out into the gathering darkness with Lana. She pulled a cigarette from her purse. She tried to light it, but her hands were shaking so badly that she could not keep the flame steady. Alexander took the lighter and finished the job for her. She took a long drag and blew the smoke away from her.

"It's all true," she said. "Isn't it?"

Alexander nodded. "You know that I wouldn't lie to you."

"It just sounds so outrageous," she replied. "Parallel worlds. Distant planets. Super powers. It's crazy."

"I know," Alexander said. "But don't worry about it anymore. Clark said that he would handle Lucas. We'll just have to believe him."

Even before the sentence got out of his mouth he saw the shape of a man fall from the third floor of the hospital and hit the pavement. Lana screamed. Alexander reached into his pocket for his cell phone, but stopped before he even pulled it out. The man peeled himself up off of the ground and stood.

"Lucas," Alexander said to himself.

Lucas turned to the sound of the scream and saw them. He stepped over so that he was directly in front of them.

"Where are they?" he asked.

"Who?" Alexander asked.

Lucas grabbed him by his throat and lifted him. "Tell me!"

"I don't know," Alexander whispered. Lucas tossed him through the glass door like he weighed nothing. Then he vanished in a streak that headed toward town.

Lana ran inside and knelt beside Alexander, who was covered in blood, as doctors and nurses began to gather around him.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine," he said as he stood up. His shirt was torn and bloody. He reached around and pulled a shard of glass from his shoulder and tossed it to the ground. "I've got to go warn Clark. Give me your keys."

She handed him the keys to her car and he left, ignoring the pleads of the medical staff as he jogged for the car.

Clark dropped to the ground behind the bushes near the south entrance of the mansion. He knew that no one had seen him. He waited for Chloe to drop down beside him. When she did, she winced at the pain in her arm.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"No," Chloe said. "But I'll think about it later. Where are we?"

"In our world, Lex's study is in there," Clark said. "The hole that I put in the floor when I escaped should be there as well."

"And you think Hamilton will be in the cellar?" Chloe asked.

"That's where all of his equipment is," Clark said. "He's the type that doesn't stray far from his things."

They went to the door and opened it. All of the lights were off except for a few computer monitors that Clark could see in the cellar through the hole. He used his x-ray vision to search the mansion. There was no one here.

"Professor Hamilton?" he called.

"You don't see him?" Chloe asked. He shook his head and called out again. This time Chloe joined him. They called his name over and over. After two or three minutes of calling for him, Chloe noticed that Clark was clutching his stomach and his chest. "Are you alright?"

Clark shook his head but did not say anything. He lurched forward and nearly fell through the hole in the floor to the cellar. He dropped to his knees and fell over onto the floor. Chloe reached into her purse and pulled out her pen light. She held it so the light shone down on him. The veins in his face and neck were showing as his skin grew tight and pale. He was turning gray as he lay there, writhing in pain but too weak to call out.

"Clark!" she yelled. "What's wrong?"

Then she noticed the glow that had filled the room. She turned and saw Emil Hamilton enter the corridor through the same entrance that they had used. In his hands was the largest piece of meteor rock that she had ever seen.

"Stop it!" Chloe said. "You're killing him!"

"The way that he tried to kill his father?" Hamilton said. "That's the idea. I'm tired of living in fear."

Chloe looked down at Clark. He had stopped moving. And she was pretty sure that he had stopped breathing.

"Clark?" she called.

He did not answer.

End of chapter eleven.

That chapter was a little lengthy. I try to go between 8 and 10 pages. I've read some fan fiction that goes on for more than 20 pages a chapter. That's easy for some, but I'm afraid that the chapters in this fic would get boring if I went any longer.

Please sent me some reviews for this chapter. You guys have no idea how pleased I am when I read reviews of my work. It's like Christmas every time I check my e mail.

Thanks for reading.

Kal-El2k7


	12. Chapter 12

Hey guys. I hope you've all been anticipating this chapter. I kind of left you with a pretty good cliff hanger last time. I'm picking up right where I left off…so enjoy!

Chapter Twelve

The pain coursed through Clark's veins. He could not hear Chloe screaming, and when he opened his eyes he could not see what was around him. There was a loud ringing noise in his ears that pierced his mind, making it impossible to pull together a logical thought. All that he knew was the pain and the weakness. He felt as if a huge hand was on his back and it was pushing him to the floor.

He knew that he was dying.

"Professor Hamilton!" Chloe screamed. "You have to stop! You're killing him!"

She continued to look on in horror as the professor stepped into the corridor outside the mansion's study. In his hand was a meteor rock at least two feet in diameter. It was pulsing with the green glow that was characteristic of the rocks, and the pulsing grew faster as he got closer to Clark.

"That's what I have in mind, Ms. Sullivan," Hamilton said. "Young Mr. Luthor has been a thorn in my side for long enough. Imagine coming back here after he tried to kill his own father this morning."

"This isn't Lucas!" Chloe said. "This is Clark Kent! He's the one that escaped from you this morning!"

"What?" Hamilton said. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" Chloe said. "I'm the one he came for."

Hamilton looked at her and stared in amazement. He obviously had not noticed her blonde hair until now. "Fascinating," he said.

"I don't have time for this," Chloe said. She rushed the professor head on and crashed into him. He fell into the door leading to the study and it opened, causing him to sprawl out across the floor. "Get rid of that thing!"

He nodded and scurried for a safe in the wall of the study. He opened it and shoved the rock inside. He closed it and came back into the corridor. Chloe was kneeling beside Clark, stroking his hair.

"Is he alive?" Hamilton asked.

"You tell me," Chloe said. "You're supposed to be the Kryptonian expert!"

"Of course," Hamilton said. "Help me get him into the cellar. I'll wire him in."

They grabbed Clark's arms and dragged him to a small elevator around the corner. The professor normally used it to take heavy machines down into his lab. Chloe looked at Clark as the tiny car slowly made its way down one story. He was still gray, but she could no longer see his veins through his skin. She held a finger under his nostrils and sighed in relief. She could just barely feel a hint of air coming from them.

"He's breathing," she said with a smile. "He's still alive."

"Thank goodness," Hamilton said.

The elevator came to a halt and they dragged him out of it. Hamilton pulled a small remote from his pocket and pressed it. Instantly, lights began to flick on throughout the cellar. Chloe looked around in astonishment. It looked exactly like a mad scientist's laboratory. There were all sorts of computers and jars full of many colored liquids. On the other side of the room she could see a device that looked a lot like the projector that had sent her here.

"Is that your projector?" Chloe asked.

"What?" the professor asked as he pulled Clark into a chair that looked a lot like one that could be found in a dentist's office. "Oh! Yes, it is. But it's only a prototype. I built that one when I first started experimenting with the meteor rocks. It's very unstable. If I were to use it, it would probably destroy itself."

Chloe looked back at Clark. He was lying motionless on the chair. She watched as the professor pulled straps across his arms and legs. Then he began to attach electrodes onto his head. He unbuttoned his shirt and put more of them on his chest. After several minutes of this, he switched on a computer and sat down to look at the data on the screen.

"Oh, dear," he said.

"What is it?" Chloe asked.

"Well, I looked at this data when Clark was here this morning," Hamilton said. "At that time I could see that the radiation from the meteor rock had corrupted his DNA. But his exposure to more rocks throughout the course of the day seems to have put a large amount of his cells in a dormant state."

"So," Chloe said. "He's completely lost his powers?"

"I'm not sure if he has the energy to get out of that chair," Hamilton said.

"He said something about a serum," she said. Hamilton looked at her in alarm.

"Serum?" he asked. "What do you know about the serum?"

"Nothing," Chloe said. "But obviously you do."

"There are only two people alive that know about the serum," Hamilton said. "Mr. Luthor and myself."

"Mr. Luthor is the one that sent him here," Chloe said. "He wants Clark to stop Lucas from causing anymore destruction."

"I see," Hamilton said. "And do you have any way of proving that, Ms. Sullivan?"

"Sure," Chloe said. "Why don't you call up Lionel at Smallville Medical? He's lying in a hospital bed after his son tried to kill him. Oh, and by the way, Clark got into a fight with Lucas just down the hall from his room. There's a chance that he could be dead. But I'm sure that he won't mind taking your call."

Hamilton sighed. "It seems that you have me between a rock and a hard place," he said. "Very well. I think that without the serum, Mr. Kent will most likely die. And the worst thing that the serum can do is kill him."

He went to a small control panel and punched in a series of characters. After a moment, Chloe heard a hissing noise. She saw ten small panels open up in the floor. Then, small compartments about the size of a telephone booth rose out of the floor where the panels had been. Inside each of these compartments was a man that looked exactly like Clark. They were all lifeless. Their bodies were limp and their eyes were closed.

"Clones," Chloe said.

"Indeed," Hamilton said. "At one time we had dreamed of an army of men that looked exactly like Lucas and embodied all of his abilities. No nation in the world would be able to compete with an army of supermen."

"And there's no price that they wouldn't pay to have one," Chloe added. "This sounds just like a Luthor plot. He's been taking Lucas' blood since he was a child?"

"Well," Hamilton said. "It only took a small amount to do create the clones. But we've had to continue collecting in order to perfect the serum." He walked around the booths that held the clones and opened up a small locker. Inside was a vial of purple colored liquid. "This is what I've spent the last twenty years trying to perfect. Even more so than the projector that my counterpart sent you here with. This is the nectar that could turn an ordinary man into a superman."

"What is it?" Chloe asked.

"It's based on the physiology of Lucas' blood," Hamilton said. "I studied the reaction that the cells have to the radiation from our sun, and I was able to duplicate it. If I inject a normal man with this liquid, it will give him the abilities that Lucas and Clark have naturally. But the effect is temporary. After two or three days that man will lose his powers and will have to be reinjected."

"But Clark isn't a normal man," Chloe said. "He's a Kryptonian."

"Normally, I wouldn't think that the serum would have any effect on him at all," Hamilton said. "However, in his present state, it could give his cells a boost and help them to begin using their pent up solar energy. I know that it will rid him of the harmful meteor radiation that's corrupted his DNA. So, it should at least save his life. Unless it kills him."

"What?" Chloe said.

"Well," Hamilton said. "I've never actually used this on a Kryptonian before."

Chloe glared at him. This bumbling idiot of a scientist had already messed things up in two worlds. He sent her here, and then his counterpart had poisoned Clark even more than he already had been. She looked at the vial in his hand. She could see that there was not going to be any other choice.

"Do it," she said.

"Yes," Hamilton said. "I'm going to. It's his only chance."

Hamilton inserted a syringe into the serum and extracted as much of it as it would hold. Then he sat down on a stool next to Clark and prepared to inject him. Chloe almost expected the needle to break on his skin, but it did not. It slipped through him just as if he were human. She knew that it was probably because he was so weak. He probably would not be invulnerable to anything in the state that he was in right now. She could see now that Kryptonite was not Clark's only weakness. It appeared that he could be drained of his abilities like a battery and then he could be killed just like anyone else.

Hamilton plunged the liquid into Clark's veins and pulled the syringe back out. He stood up and backed away from him. They waited for nearly five minutes, but nothing appeared to be happening.

"Is it working?" Chloe asked.

Hamilton looked at the display on his computer monitor. "His pulse is very fast," he said. "But his respiration has not yet changed. His blood pressure is off of the charts, but it isn't that different from the tests that I've performed on Lucas."

At that moment Clark's entire body seized. He went rigid all over and Chloe could see veins popping out in his neck and on his forehead. He opened his mouth and gritted his teeth. His eyes opened and bulged as if they were about to come out of his head.

"What's happening to him?" Chloe asked.

The numbers on the computer monitor were changing rapidly. Chloe did not know what they meant, but they were going up and down faster than she could follow.

"I don't know," Hamilton said.

Then, Clark's arms and legs exploded from the restraints and he shot straight up into the air. He hit the ceiling and then came crashing back down, cracking the concrete of the cellar floor. He appeared to go into a seizure for a few seconds and then he collapsed.

"Clark?" Chloe said. She ran to him and knelt down at his side. She turned him over so that he was lying on his back. "Clark? Are you okay?"

Clark opened his eyes and looked up at her. "Chloe? What happened?"

"How do you feel?" Chloe asked. "Are you still weak?"

Clark sat up and shook his head. He held his hands up in front of his face. Then he made a fist and punched the floor beside him. More of the concrete fractured. He smiled.

"I've got a splitting headache," he said. "But other than that, I'd say I'm fine."

"Professor Hamilton gave you the serum," Chloe said. "It looks like it worked."

Clark stood up and turned to face Hamilton. "Thank you, Professor."

"Good," Hamilton said with a smile. "Now I can begin to find a way to get you two back to your own dimension."

"No," Clark said. "I'm not ready for that yet. I've got to find Lucas. He's out of control and I think more people are going to get hurt if I don't stop him."

"But you may not be completely better, Mr. Kent," Hamilton said. "Lucas could still beat you. He's very powerful."

"I'll have to take my chances," Clark said. "I'm the only one that can fight him."

He turned toward the door that led up the stairs. Chloe moved in front of him.

"Clark," she said. "Please be careful. The Lois and Chloe of this world are already dead because I was stupid enough to tell Lucas that I knew his secret."

"None of this is your fault, Chloe," Clark said.

"I know that," Chloe replied. "But I don't think that I could live with myself if he did something to you, too."

"Chloe," Clark said. "You saved my life just now. If you hadn't been here I'd probably be dead right now. But I want you to know that nothing that happens to me will ever be your fault."

Chloe nodded and wiped the tears from her eyes with her hand. "Professor Hamilton has a prototype of the projector here in the cellar. I'm going to see if he can modify it to send us home."

"I'll come back here," Clark said. "I'll see you in a bit." As soon as he had said it, he disappeared and Chloe felt a gust of wind rush over her as he sped off at supersonic speeds.

"Ms. Sullivan," Hamilton said as he stepped forward. "I told you that the prototype is extremely unstable."

"That's why you're going to make it stable," Chloe said. "Let's get to work."

It was nine o'clock when Lucas reached the Talon. He had been all over town looking for the two alternates and had not yet seen a trace of them. He could hear the sirens in the distance as the police continued to look for him. He was pretty sure that people had seen him here or there since he had left the hospital. But of course he would always be long gone before anyone could catch up to him. Even they had to know that there was not anything that they would be able to do to him even if they found him. He smiled.

"Come out, come out, where ever you are," he said to himself. Where could they have gone? Then it came to him. He remembered what it was that the Kents were talking about when he had attacked Clark in the first place. They had said something about Hamilton having something that he needed. Hamilton was not at LuthorCorp anymore, and so there was only one other place that he could possibly be.

He shot off in a blur as he headed for the Luthor mansion.

Clark stopped in the center of the highway about a mile before he would have reached town. He could see something headed across the field beside the road. It was headed in the direction that he had just come. He called out to it.

"Lucas!" he yelled. The streak turned and headed for him. He expected it to stop, but it did not. Lucas hit him head on and sent him flying into the barbed wire fence behind him. He went through it, sending the wire snapping into the air. Two cows that had been grazing trotted away, groaning mournfully.

"I knew that you'd be out this way," Lucas said. "None of your friends came?"

Clark stood up and ran back to the highway. He shoved his fist into Lucas' stomach and then put his knee into his nose. Lucas soared high into the air and came crashing back down onto the asphalt.

"I don't need any help," he said.

Lucas stood up and wiped his nose. There was a little blood coming from it. "So, you really are my counterpart. Are you my equal?"

"Only in strength," Clark said. "But I'm way ahead of you in the other thing that we've struggled with."

Lucas leaped into the air and came down with a kick. Clark grabbed his foot and slung him back into the air. He came down thirty feet away and stumbled getting back up.

"What struggle is that?" he asked.

"The struggle of being human," Clark replied.

Lucas laughed as he casually walked back toward Clark. "Who needs to be human, Kal-El? Why be human when we could be gods? That's why Jor-El sent us here. Don't you realize that? He wanted us to rule this puny planet!"

"I decided a long time ago that Jor-El and I had different plans for my life," Clark said. "You were raised to conquer without caring. I was raised to respect the lives of others."

"That's probably a bigger weakness than meteor rocks," Lucas said. "You could really be something special."

"I plan to be something special," Clark said. "But I'm not going to step on the backs of others to get there. And I definitely won't kill anyone!"

"You're not going to stop me, Smallville," Lucas said.

"I won't kill you, Lucas," Clark replied.

"That's too bad," Lucas said. "Because, I plan to kill you."

Chloe and Professor Hamilton pulled the projector out of the corner that it had been resting in. It was very similar to the one that had sent her here. But the actual mechanism that fired the beam was a lot more crudely put together.

"What's the matter with it?" she asked.

"Well," Hamilton started as he pushed his glasses up on his nose. "There was a glitch that caused the beam to become much too intense just before it fired. It destroyed the enhancer."

"What's the enhancer?" Chloe asked.

"That's the device that the beam fires into," Hamilton said. "It has a hole in it and the image from the other universe is projected inside of it."

Chloe remembered the device back at LuthorCorp. "Well, this is our best chance to get home. As long as Lionel Luthor is in the hospital, you're not going to be able to get into LuthorCorp to use the other machine unless we're able to sneak you in somehow. So, I need you to take another look at this thing and try to get it to work correctly."

Hamilton nodded. "Since we're not trying to see into another world, we should be able to do this without the enhancer. However, I will have to find the correct world to send you to. That could take some time."

"Then let's get started," Chloe said.

"I'll need a blood sample," Hamilton said. Chloe looked at him in surprise. "I have to find the world that your DNA is encoded to. For that, I need to get a sample of your DNA."

Chloe sighed and rolled up her sleeve.

Lucas punched Clark in the jaw and sent him sliding down the highway. He got up and rushed forward, knocking Lucas off of his feet. He straddled him with his knees on the ground on either side of him. He began to punch him in the face continuously. Lucas' blood was covering his fists.

"You won't win, Kent!" Lucas said. He shoved his knees upward and sent Clark into the air. When he came down he landed on his head. Lucas stood up and spit blood on the ground. He had never bled this much in his life. "You've been using your powers against wussies for too long. You don't know how to give out a good old fashioned butt kicking."

Clark sat up. Lucas was speeding toward him again. He sent a blast of heat from his eyes and Lucas fell back. His shirt was on fire. He snatched it off and threw it to the side of the road. He returned the blast, but Clark zipped out of the way just in time to miss it.

He ran around Lucas and came back at him from the other side. He stopped and grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him to the ground. Then he stood over him and punched him again. He could tell that Lucas had been punched enough that he was getting dizzy.

"Give up, Lucas," Clark said. "I don't want to hurt you."

Alexander sped toward the mansion as fast as Lana's car would carry him. He had made a stop on the way. Beside him he now carried a small box made of lead. Inside of it was the chunk of meteor rock that they kept at the high school for studying. It was kept inside the box to protect anyone from being introduced to too much of its radiation. He figured that if Lucas had been beaten once by a rock as small as the one on Lana's necklace, then one the size of his fist should be enough to help Clark beat him for good.

He just had to keep it away from Clark.

The old highway that led to the mansion was dark. There were no street lights and there were no stripes on the road. But still he drove. He had his foot almost on the floor. He knew that Lucas would be able to run faster than a jet to get there, but he could only hope that he would get there first.

That was when he saw them. Clark and Lucas were in the center of the highway having a battle of epic proportions. Lucas hit Clark with a jab that sent him flying off of the highway. Then, Clark came back with a roundhouse kick the sent the other man into the air. Alexander slammed on the brakes and watched in amazement. Clark had obviously gotten his abilities back and they were evenly matched. No one would win if they kept fighting like this. This fight could go on forever.

Clark nailed Lucas in the chin and he went soaring into the air. Alexander only had a second to realize that he was headed right for him. He grabbed the box that contained the rock and leaped from the car. A second later, Lucas landed on the hood of the vehicle and his head went through the windshield. There was a loud crash and the windows exploded as the entire front of the car was crushed under the impact.

This was his chance. Alexander ran over to him and placed the box on his chest and opened the lid. The green light filled the area with its glow. Lucas jerked and then went rigid. He groaned. Alexander stepped back.

"Alex!" Clark said as he ran up behind him. "You shouldn't be here!" He had barely said the words before he was doubled over from the effects of the rock.

"Clark!" Alexander said. "Get back!" He rushed to Clark and pulled him far enough away that he was able to regain himself.

"What are you doing?" Clark asked.

"It's a meteor rock," Alexander said. "I'm helping you."

"I promised Lionel that I wouldn't kill him," Clark said.

"Then don't kill him," Alexander replied. "I'll do it. You'd better get to the mansion and get out of here."

Clark looked at him. He could see that he was trying to help. Then he looked at Lucas, dying on the hood of Lana's car. He could leave him there and go home, knowing that Lucas would never hurt anyone again. Or he could risk his own life and save him.

"Go, Clark," Alexander said, trying to take the burden from his shoulders. "I'll handle everything here."

Clark nodded and turned back to the mansion. Alexander could not see him after he hit full speed.

End of chapter twelve

I started to keep the chapter going, but I really thought that this would make a good cliff hanger. I'll get the next chapter up in a day or two. Hope you guys are still enjoying it. I really liked writing the battle between Clark and Lucas. I hope it comes off the same as it did in my head.

A quick note. There will probably only be about three chapters left in this story. Maybe four. But I really think that this episode is coming to an end. But as you can tell from the title, I have plans for a sequel that will bring back a couple of our friends from the mirror universe.

Thanks for reading.

Kal-El2k7


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Professor Hamilton slapped the side of a computer monitor that was flickering and the image became a little clearer. Judging by the age of the computer, it had been quite some time since he had done anything with this projector. He grunted and Chloe thought that she had heard an occasional swear word.

"What are you doing?" Chloe asked.

"This is a program that I developed years ago," Hamilton said. "It rifles through all of the known dimensions and searches for the characteristics that I give it. But I never really finished it. That was about the same time that I discovered the unique properties of the meteor rocks and the usefulness that they had in my experiments. I built the projector and put this on hold."

"Is it working?" Chloe asked.

"Barely," Hamilton replied. "The processor in this computer is very slow and I don't have a better one to spare. They're all attached to very important projects."

Chloe looked at the monitor. On the screen was her name with a number underneath it. She guessed that it was supposed to represent her DNA code in numeric form. To the right of that was a box labeled "Earth #". In the box was a number that kept changing as the program looked in each universe in its catalogue for the one that matched Chloe's blood sample.

"What happens if my world is not in the catalogue?" Chloe asked.

"Then I'll have to activate the projector's beam and scan you," Hamilton said.

"You're doing things a lot differently than your counterpart," Chloe said.

"I imagine so," Hamilton replied. "He doesn't have to do top secret genetic research for Lionel Luthor in a hidden laboratory. Does he?"

"Not that I know of," Chloe replied.

"But on the other hand, my machine won't zap you and send you to another dimension unless I intend for it to do so," he said. He got up and went to the projector. He started to tap a few buttons on it.

"What are you doing now?" she inquired.

"I have to be sure that the projector isn't going to incinerate you and your friend," Hamilton said. "To do that, I have to test it." He went to a dark part of the room and switched on the light. Chloe saw a shelf covered in cages. Half of the cages had little white lab rats inside them. The other half of them contained small rabbits. Hamilton chose one of the cages with a rabbit inside and brought it back with him.

"You're not going to test it on an animal! Are you?"

Hamilton smiled. "Ms. Sullivan, would you care to volunteer?"

Chloe looked at him and looked at the machine. "Well, no. But couldn't you try it on an inanimate object first? There's no reason to hurt an innocent creature."

"I have to find out how the projector is going to do when used on a living subject," Hamilton said. "I can't possibly put a human in front of the beam unless I am relatively sure that they will survive."

He took the rabbit from the cage and set it on the table in front of the projector. The animal sat there and looked around as he activated the machine and plugged in a few commands. A green glow began to emit from a chamber on the top of the machine. Chloe knew that it was where the meteor rock was stored.

"Now," Hamilton said. "I'm going to send the rabbit to Earth number two. It is almost identical to this one. I'm fairly confident that I have a counterpart there that is about to sent a rabbit to yet another world." He pressed a button and the machine began to emit a high pitched ringing sound. He watched the controls. "I can't open the beam until the emitter is fully charged with energy from the meteor rock."

"How long will that take?" Chloe asked.

"It's ready now," Hamilton said. "Wait! There's a fluctuation in the displacement field!" He tapped a few controls. "It's okay now. Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Chloe replied.

Hamilton pressed one last button and a bright beam of light shot out of the projector. There was a green flash that seemed as though it were going to blind her. Then everything was normal and quiet. On the table where the rabbit had been there was now nothing but a tiny plume of smoke.

"Did it work?" Chloe asked.

Hamilton looked at his computer. "I believe so. There is no way of knowing for certain. But there is a ninety-nine point four seven percent chance that it was a success."

"What were you talking about when you said that there was a fluctuation of some kind?" she said.

"Well," Hamilton said. "It's a little technical. But if I were to fire the beam while it was fluctuating, it would have scattered the rabbit across the multiverse."

"Could that happen to us?" Chloe asked.

"Ms. Sullivan," Hamilton said. "It could have happened to you on your way here."

One of the computer alarms started to beep and Hamilton ran to the monitor to see.

"What is it?" Chloe asked.

"The computer has found a match," Hamilton said. "Your DNA definitely came from Earth number seventy-four. That's very similar to this one."

"Not as similar as you'd think," Chloe replied.

"Yes," Hamilton said. "Well, now all we need is your friend and we can give this a try."

Chloe looked at her watch. Clark had been gone for nearly an hour. What was taking him so long?

Alexander watched Clark vanish as he sped off toward the mansion. He then turned back to Lucas, writhing in pain on the hood of Lana's demolished vehicle. He walked toward him until he was looking down at him. The green glow from the meteor rock was putting a dim illumination on his face. His teeth were gritted tight and his lips were curled back. He looked up at Alexander with a pleading look and then his eyes rolled back in his head. He tried unsuccessfully to reach up and close the box, but his weakness had overtaken him. He was dying.

"I'm not a murderer," Alexander said. Lucas moaned in response. "But you've killed two of my friends today. And you've tried to kill others, including myself." Lucas barely pulled his head off of the car and looked at him for a second before collapsing again. "You've let your powers take control of who you are and you've become dangerous. You can't be allowed to live."

He turned his back on Lucas and stepped over to the side of the road. He was determined not to watch him as he died. He stared off into the pasture. He was barely aware of the gust of wind that blew past him. He turned around to find that Clark had returned and that he was standing in front of Lucas, doubled over in pain.

"Clark!" Alexander called. "What are you doing?"

Clark did not answer. He slowly reached over and flipped the lid closed on the box. The green glow that had filled the area was instantly gone. He picked up the box and brought it to where Alexander was standing.

"I couldn't let it happen, Alex," Clark said.

"Clark," Alexander replied. "Lucas is a very dangerous threat to everyone in this world. He's a killer."

"I know he is," Clark said. "And he probably does deserve to die. But I'm not going to make that call. And neither are you."

"You should have stayed gone," Alexander said. "I would have taken care of it."

"Look, Alex," Clark said. "The version of you from my world is a bad person. I believe that he's going to get a lot worse in the years to come. I wouldn't want to see you do anything that could possibly take you down a similar road. Killing Lucas may have been the wrong step for you."

"He's moving," Alexander said.

Lucas was slowly pulling himself up off of the car. He sat up and held his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes and his temples. Clark moved back so that he was standing directly in front of him.

"If you try anything I'll tell him to open the box again," he said.

Lucas lifted his head and glared at him. Clark felt a wave of uneasiness as he stared at a lifetime of hate and anger that emitted from his own eyes.

"What is it?" Lucas asked. "I've always gotten sick around meteor rocks. Why?"

"It's called Kryptonite," Clark said. "They're pieces of Krypton that react differently on Earth. It's the one thing that can kill me…us."

"Does everyone know that?" Lucas asked.

"Not everyone," Clark said. "I try to keep it secret. A couple of my friends know, and my parents." He watched as Lucas nodded and continued to rub his temples. "That's why your plan can never work."

Lucas looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"You want to rule the world," Clark said. "You want to be a god among men. But as soon as someone discovers what these rocks can do to you, they'll be able to control you. You'll never be able to survive if you continue to make enemies."

"You don't understand," Lucas said. "I've lived my entire life in a lie. My father didn't tell me any of the things that your parents told you. I found out in one day that I'm an alien and that my own father has been trying to profit from me."

"Did it really surprise you?" Clark asked. "He raised you to profit from anything that you could no matter what it cost those around you. Did you really think that he would treat you with any difference?" Lucas sighed. "Besides, it doesn't really matter what he did to you. Did that give you the right to kill Chloe and Lois?"

Lucas looked up suddenly. "I didn't mean to kill Chloe," he said. "I loved her."

"And you killed her anyway," Clark said. "Isn't that worse than what Lionel did to you. And then you murdered Lois."

"I remember going into her room at the hospital," Lucas said. "But I don't remember killing her. I just remember being so angry with my father. And then I found out that he was conspiring against me with you."

"No he wasn't," Clark said. "He asked me to stop you. When you turned on him, it caused him to see what he had done to you. He's full of remorse. He knew that you had snapped and he wanted me to stop you before you hurt anyone else."

Lucas stood up. He looked at Alexander who was standing by the edge of the road. He was shaking. Lucas nodded in his direction.

"Why did you stop him?" he asked.

"What?" Clark replied.

"Kent," Lucas said. "He was killing me with that meteor rock. Why'd you stop him? I deserve it. I killed two of your friends."

"Because it's not my job to be your executioner," Clark said. "And it's not his either."

"What are you going to do with me, then?" Lucas asked.

"I don't know," Clark said. "I've never had to make that kind of decision before. Most of the bad guys I face never stop. They keep going until they destroy themselves. You have to answer for Chloe and Lois."

Lucas nodded. "What about Jor-El?"

"What about him?" Clark asked.

"I mean, I know that he's dead," Lucas continued. "But is there any way of knowing what he would have done to me?"

"I don't trust Jor-El," Clark said. "I'll come up with something. For right now, it's enough for me to know that you understand what you've done. I think that you're being punished even now."

"How do you see your abilities?" Lucas asked. Clark looked at him questioningly. "I mean, are they a blessing or a curse?"

"Usually they're a blessing," Clark said. "I mean, there are a lot of things that I can't do like normal people. But I've been able to save people enough times to more than make up for that."

"I've never saved anyone," Lucas said. "I'm not really a hero type."

"No one says that you have to be," Clark replied. "That's a choice that I made. As long as you're not a villain, it's alright."

"So, what are we going to do now?" Alexander asked.

"We need to get back to the mansion," Clark said. "I may have to stick around long enough to figure out what to do with Lucas. But I want to send Chloe home."

"Clark," Lucas said. He dabbed at the blood coming from his nose and flexed his shoulder. It was sore from landing on the car. "I'm sorry about your friends. I've been a fool. All of this time I've been causing destruction and trying to kill you. I guess I was angry and felt threatened because of what you are. Really, what I should have been doing is finding a way to be more like you."

"I've always wondered why Lex is the way that he is," Clark said. "I guess that if I'd been raised by Lionel Luthor I would probably have turned out the same way."

"Or worse," Lucas said.

"You know," Alexander said, stepping forward, "in a way, we're all kind of like brothers. I mean, Clark and I were raised by counterparts of the same father. And you two were both fathered by different versions of Jor-El."

"I guess that's right," Lucas said.

"It's not conventional," Clark replied. "But it makes sense."

Lucas looked at Alexander with a look of confusion. "Wait. I understand how you and Clark are connected and how he's connected to me. But how are you like my brother?"

Alexander smiled. "Oh, yeah. Lionel Luthor has a couple more skeletons in his closet that you need to know about."

Professor Hamilton was making his last adjustments to the projector when the door to the cellar flew open. Chloe jumped up and wheeled around to find some version of Clark Kent standing in the doorway that led to the stairs.

"Clark?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"Oh," she replied. "Thank God. I thought for a second that you might be…"

She stopped speaking as Clark came into the room and made way for his counterpart to follow.

"Lucas," she finished. "I take it that you found him."

"He did," Lucas said. He stepped forward until he was only a few feet away from her. "And he nearly killed me. But he didn't. He showed mercy on me, which is something that I didn't deserve after the things that I've done today."

"Are you kidding me?" Chloe said. "He should have tied you to a pole and flung you into deep space."

Lucas smiled. "Indeed. But, since he didn't, I now have the chance to tell you something. I'm sorry."

"What?" Chloe asked.

"I'm sorry," Lucas repeated. "You tried to reach out to me when you saw me and I saw it as a threat. The things that I forced you to tell me led me to some awful discoveries. But I shouldn't have tried to hurt you."

"But, you killed the other me," Chloe said. "And Lois, too."

"I'm going to pay for that," Lucas said. He turned to Clark. "You don't have to stay here. I'm going to go and make amends with my father. Then I'm going to allow him to make a decision regarding my punishment."

"I want to believe you, Lucas," Clark said. "But you and I both know that there isn't a human alive that can force you to do anything if you change your mind. You have too fragile of a temper."

"That is why I am going to depend on Mr. Kent," Lucas said.

"Me?" Alexander said. Chloe had not even noticed when he had come inside.

"Yes," Lucas said. "You see, it is still very possible that I could turn if my temper takes control of me again. That is why I am giving my permission to Alexander to do whatever is necessary to stop me if that ever takes place."

"How would I do that?" Alexander asked.

"With the meteor rock in that box," Lucas said. "Kill me, if you have to. But do not allow me to harm another person. I am entrusting you with that task."

Alexander looked at Clark. "Does that satisfy you?"

Clark nodded. "It sounds as good as anything that I could have come up with."

"Then I guess I'll do it," Alexander said. "But you really have to turn yourself in."

"And everyone knows what you are," Clark said. "They may do experiments on you."

"At least I'll know that they're doing them," Lucas said. He turned back to Chloe. "One other thing, Ms. Sullivan."

"What's that?" Chloe asked.

"I'm sorry that I killed your counterpart and her cousin," Lucas said.

"Why are you apologizing to me?" she replied.

"Because you are the closest thing to her that there is," Lucas said. "I loved her, and yet I never really told her. I mistreated her and abused her. And then I allowed my anger to make me kill her. And then I killed the closest person that she had."

"Make up for it," Chloe said.

"We've already decided…" Lucas began.

"I'm not talking about jail or LuthorCorp labs or whatever," she interrupted. "I'm talking about when they let you out of all of that. Make up for it. Save a thousand lives for each one of their's. And then save some more. Be more like a Kent than a Luthor."

Lucas shook his head. "I've already told Clark that I'm not very heroic."

Chloe looked at Clark. "Any version of Clark is a hero in my book. You just might have to work harder at it."

"Ms. Sullivan!" the professor called as he crossed the room. "Mr. Kent! I believe I have everything in place!"

"He got it to work?" Clark asked.

"I hope so," Chloe replied.

Lucas and Alexander took a seat at a desk across from the computer station that Hamilton seated himself. Clark and Chloe both went and stood in front of the wall that the projector was pointed at.

"Oh," Hamilton said. "I forgot to tell you. This prototype is much less stable than the one at LuthorCorp. I'm afraid to use it on more than one of you at a time."

Clark and Chloe looked from Hamilton to one another.

"You go first," Clark said.

"No way!" Chloe said. "I'm not going over there and waiting for you. I want to know that you're safe."

"Chloe," Clark replied. "The only reason that I came here was to get you. If something happens and you don't make it back, it'll all be for nothing."

"That machine nearly killed you when you crossed over," Chloe said. "I'm not going to spend the rest of my life wondering what happened to you."

"Fine," Clark said, a little put out. He looked at Hamilton. "Professor, I need a lead vest or apron to filter the Kryptonite."

Hamilton jumped out of his chair. "Of course you do! Why didn't I realize that?" He ran to a storage bin and pulled one out. It did not look quite the same as the one he had worn before. But when he put it on he saw that it covered his chest and stomach, which is where most of the energy would be directed. Hamilton also handed him a vial of the purple serum. "Have my counterpart inject you with this when you get there. You'll most likely experience the same problem with your abilities that you did before. This will give them back to you."

"Thanks," Clark said as he stuck the vial into his pocket.

Chloe stood behind Hamilton as he activated the machine and dialed in the correct Earth number that they were targeting. The whirring noise began and the chamber that held the meteor rock began to glow. Clark stumbled backward as the energy from the machine was directed toward him. The beam had not fired, but the energy was building. Chloe looked over and saw that Lucas was also being affected by the pulse as it emitted from the rock.

"Professor," she said. "You have to hurry. The radiation is making them sick."

"This one isn't as fast as the other one, Ms. Sullivan," he replied. "I'm going as fast as I can."

Clark had dropped to his knees. Alexander got up and rushed to Chloe's side.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"It hasn't built up enough energy," Chloe said. "But it's hurting him."

"Shut it off," Alexander told the professor.

"This is their best chance of getting home, Mr. Kent," Hamilton replied. "He'll be fine once the transportation is complete."

That was when the computer alarm began to beep.

"What is it?" Chloe asked.

"There's a fluctuation in the displacement field," Hamilton said. "It should right itself in a second." They waited. Chloe looked at the monitor and saw that the Earth number was changing every second or two from the right one to a different one.

"You have to shut it off," Alexander said.

"I don't think that I can," Hamilton said. "The energy has built up too high. If I disconnect it, it could explode."

"Get him out from in front of that thing!" Lucas said. He was standing, struggling to fight the effects of the meteor rock's energy. But they could all see that it was having a much stronger effect on Clark.

"I can't allow that," Hamilton said. "One of you could be displaced as well. He'll have to move of his own power."

"Clark!" Chloe yelled. "You've got to move! Something's wrong with the machine!"

Clark looked up and looked at her. He saw the green glow from the projector get brighter.

Chloe screamed as a burst of green light shot out of the projector and hit the place where Clark was sitting. Instantly, the projector died down and the professor shut it off. The green glow disappeared.

"Clark!" Alexander screamed as he and Chloe rushed to where he had been. The only thing that remained was a small plume of smoke.

End of chapter thirteen.

I just want to let everyone know about the answer to my question. Emil Hamilton is a character in the comics. He is a professor that worked at LexCorp for a while before moving to S.T.A.R. Labs. He knows about Superman's origins and studies his physiology. He treats him when he gets any kind of illness and conducts his physicals. I just thought that it would be fun in this fic to show a younger Hamilton meeting Clark for the first time.

Kal-El2k7


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

When Clark had grabbed him by his shoulder and pulled him up he had felt weak. Dizziness swam through his head and he teetered on his feet. He looked around and saw Clark standing there, staring at him. He was telling him that if he did anything he would have someone open the box again. He looked around and found the Kent guy by the edge of the road. He was holding a small box as if it were a baby.

Then he remembered. He had been in a battle with Clark Kent. He had crashed on top of this car and Alexander had placed something on him. A meteor rock…that was what it was. The rocks had always made him ill. He asked Clark about it and he explained what it was and what it would do to him.

They had him. He had been beaten. And now that he had the chance to think about it, he could almost see what would happen next play out before him. Clark would have Alexander use the rock to control him until they could get him to submit to them. Then they would force him to turn himself over to human authorities to answer for the deaths of Chloe and Lois. He could not let that happen. He could see now that his quest for world domination was not going to happen. He would never be able to rule people as long as he had an Achilles' heel such as meteor rocks that could be used against him. But he would not be held prisoner like a common thief, and be forced to stay there by the use of Kryptonite.

Or he could even see a fate even worse than prison. His father may use all of his power to have him turned over to the care of LuthorCorp. Then he would be used as a guinea pig. They would conduct all sorts of experiments on him. He would be the only known alien being to live for such a long period of time on Earth, and they would want to know all about it.

That, too, could not happen.

He had to cease his fighting. He had to calm down long enough to regain control of the situation. Clark Kent was his equal. He was the only one that was physically strong enough to stop him. But he was weak. Even now, as Lucas asked him why he did not allow him to die, he had a lot of noble reasoning about not being a murderer and not being his judge and all. He was weaker than the pathetic people that inhabited this planet. He could be manipulated.

So, he began to spin the proverbial yarn. He began to explain to Clark how it could not really be his fault that he had done these horrible things because of the things that his own father had done to him. Clark tried to make him see that it did not give him the right to kill. And the words that he said about how he had killed Chloe despite the way that he felt about her really did hit him. And the fact that someone so weak could actually find a way into his heart angered him even more.

But he kept this deception going. He knew that the only way that he would possibly escape what the humans called justice is if he made Clark think that he had seen the error of his ways. Then Clark would go back to his own world and he would be free to do as he pleased.

Clark decided that they should all go back to the mansion. He was going to get Hamilton to send Chloe home and then he was going to decide what to do with him. That was not going to work. As they walked toward the home that he had shared with his father since his childhood, he continued to contemplate upon what he could do to free himself from this mess that he had gotten himself into. A glance over at Alexander, who was still carrying the box that contained the meteor rock, gave him an idea.

He waited until they were in the cellar where Hamilton was preparing to send the two duplicates back to their own dimension. Then, he gave Chloe an apology that almost seemed to melt her. That was when he made the suggestion to Clark. He told him that he would turn himself over to his father to do with as he saw fit. It he got out of line he would expect Alexander to use that meteor rock to control him, or even kill him if he had to. Amazingly, Clark agreed to this. It had never even occurred to him that as soon as he had left this dimension that Lucas would take the lead box and hurl it into the ocean. And then he would probably kill Alexander just to make double sure that the problem was taken care of.

Now, he was sitting in a chair next to Alexander. Clark was standing in front of the projector. He was only seconds away from being rid of his duplicate. He would either go back to where he came from, or he would be killed. Either way, he would not have to worry about him anymore.

When the energy from the meteor rock inside the projector began to seep into the room, Lucas began to feel weak. It was not as bad as it had been a little while ago. He guessed that it was because most of the radiation was being directed at Clark. He watched as Clark sunk to his knees, unable to stand under the tremendous pressure that was penetrating every pore of his body.

That was when it began to happen. He began to sense Clark's thoughts. He did not know if it was a reaction that occurred when two Kryptonians were exposed to the radiation, or if it was something between duplicates when one of them was in trouble. He saw Clark's life play out before him. He saw a young and loving couple looking down at him inside his pod. He saw a beautiful, dark-haired girl kissing him for the first time. It took a moment for him to realize that it was Lana Lang. All of these things bombarded his mind, driving him out of his chair and to the floor.

And not only could he see what Clark had experienced, he could also feel what he had felt. Every loving feeling and every angry fight came through his mind all at once. He felt angry, happy, scared, and anxious all at once. He felt the joy of making love to Lana at the same time that he felt the despair of losing his father. And he felt the turmoil that he felt over his friend, Lex. All of this flooded him, and he could feel that his thoughts and feelings were being transferred to Clark as well. It was almost as if they were combining. He was still him, but part of him was Clark as well.

Then, he began to sense something else. Even as Clark's body grew weaker, he felt him diving deep into his mind. He was pulling up feelings that Lucas had tried hard to bury.

Lucas Luthor had caused two people to lose their lives in one day. One of them had been Chloe Sullivan, his own girlfriend. He had loved her as much as he knew how to love a person, but he had never told her. Instead, he had abused her. He had hit her in her face in order to gain information from her about other people. And then, when an alternate version of her had come to his world and told him that she knew his secret, it had let out a beast inside him. A beast that until that day he had managed to keep control of. When he found out the terrible things that his father had done to him, he decided that it was all the fault of the alternate Chloe, so he sought out to destroy her. Instead, he had killed the only woman that he had ever cared about, and possibly the only one that had ever cared about him.

Then there had been Lois Lane. He had gone to Lois' hospital room in order to get her to tell him about this other Chloe and the version of himself that had shown up, displaying his same powers. When she would not tell him anything, he had placed a hand over her face, intending to scare her into submission. But as he did so, he felt as if a tiny voice were in the back of his mind telling him not to let go. He did not. After a moment, he felt her life scurry away under his crushing palm.

And his father had nearly known his new destructive nature. He had held him over a hole in the floor of the mansion and dropped him into the cellar. The fall had not killed him, but he had all but decided to go back and finish the job. However, Lionel had made it to the hospital and was now on the mend. And, according to Clark Kent, he was repentant of the way that he had raised Lucas and the experiments that he had done on him. He was probably sorry that he had allowed his own biological son to be taken from him in trade of the alien child that had fallen from the heavens.

After all of these terrible things that he had done, he had finally met his match. He had engaged Clark Kent in an epic battle between two men with the powers of gods. They had been evenly matched, until Alexander Kent had pulled out the one thing that would bring a Kryptonian living on Earth to his knees. The Kryptonite had nearly killed him, and death was what he deserved after the sins that he had committed.

Now he could see the evil that resided inside him. He knew that he had to pay for his sins. And he could see now that he had to make amends for the lives that he had stolen.

And now, watching Clark slump to his knees as the energy from the meteor rock sunk into his skin, he could see that the man that had spared him and changed his life was in grave danger. The radiation was affecting him as well, but it was being directly aimed at Clark. He still had use of his body, Clark could not move.

This was his chance. This was his opportunity to make a difference and put right some of the things that he had made wrong.

He made his move just as the beam began to come out of the projector. He ran forward at a speed that no one could see. He doubted that even Clark could see him in the shape that he was in right now. He crashed into Clark's body with all of his might, sending the other man sailing to the other side of the room where he smashed into a wall. The beam finished its journey on Lucas' shoulder. He had not put on the lead vest, and so his body took the entire blast and absorbed it. He screamed as his seemed to boil inside him and he felt fire coursing over his skin. He could feel his own cells tearing themselves apart and his vision dimmed into a flash of green light.

He was gone.

End of Chapter Fourteen

This is the shortest chapter so far. But I was able to get it written and I didn't want you to have to wait until tomorrow to see the twist. I hope you like it. It's different. There's no dialogue. It's the first chapter that takes place entirely in a character's head. I wanted you to really get into his head and see how he thinks. I hope it came across the way that I meant for it to.

Lucas is a bad guy. But he has some humanity. Just like Lex is bad, but we know from the beginning of the series that there is some good in him. I hope you took that from this chapter.

Kal-El2k7


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Clark smashed into the wall head first. The shelves crumbled and fell to the floor, dumping all sorts of spare parts and pieces of equipment on top of him. He passed out for a few seconds, the pain of the meteor rock exposure still burning in his veins. When he finally came to himself enough to open his eyes, he saw Chloe and Alexander kneeling over the place that he had just been. Chloe was crying softly, clutching Alexander by the shirt.

"Clark!" she screamed, the sound of it muffled against Alexander's chest.

"Chloe," Clark gasped. He threw some of the pieces of junk off of himself.

"Clark!" she repeated, this time as she hurried toward him and helped pull some of the stuff off of him. "You're still here!"

"How did you get out of the way?" Alexander asked as he helped him sit up.

Clark shook his head. He really did not know how he had wound up on this side of the room. He remembered feeling as though some force were pushing him to the ground as fire shot through his body. He had heard Chloe and the professor yelling about something and had known that something was wrong. But even realizing that, he was unable to move to get himself out of harm's way. Then he felt something hard hit him in his side and he had found himself crashing into the wall.

"Where's Lucas?" he asked. Alexander turned and looked at the place where he had been sitting.

"He got away!" he said.

"I knew that he wasn't telling the truth," Chloe said. "He's a Luthor to the core."

Clark stood up and walked to the scorched place in the floor. "He didn't get away," he said. "He saved me."

"What?" Chloe asked.

"He did it faster than you could see," Clark replied. "He knocked me out of the way before the beam got to me. It hit him instead."

"So, he's gone?" Chloe asked.

"Yeah," Clark said, a hint of sadness in his voice.

"Well," Alexander said in confusion. "Where'd he go?"

The professor stepped away from the projector and looked at them. There was a great deal of regret on the man's face. "He didn't go anywhere."

"What do you mean?" Clark asked.

"At the time that the beam fired the machine was going haywire," Hamilton replied. "It wasn't locked onto any one dimension. Either Lucas was dispersed over the entire multiverse, or he's in between worlds somewhere."

"Well," Clark said. "Find him. Bring him back."

"I don't think it will be possible," Hamilton said. "As a matter of fact, I know that it won't be with this projector. It's seen its last experiment."

They all stood in silence, almost as if they were at a funeral.

"He was telling the truth," Chloe said. "And I didn't believe him. He really had changed."

"No," Clark said. "When he told us that he was sorry for what he had done and that he was going to turn himself over to Lionel, he was lying."

"What?" Alexander asked.

"He was waiting for me to leave," Clark said. "He knew that I was the only one that would ever be able to stop him. Once Chloe and I were gone he was going to kill you and get rid of that rock."

The other three stared at him in utter bewilderment and confusion.

"How could you possibly know that?" Chloe asked.

"I don't know," Clark said. "Something happened while I was in that energy field. I got so weak that I started to draw energy from Lucas."

The professor smiled. "I've seen something like that in my experiments with Lucas. I think that there is a Kryptonian survival mechanism in your makeup that allows you to sort of feed off of others of your kind if they are close by."

"Well, it was more than just that," Clark said. "We kind of merged."

"Merged?" Chloe asked. "What does that mean?"

"It only happened for a few seconds," Clark said. "But it was almost like we became the same person. I could see inside of him. I knew what he thought and I could feel his feelings. I knew exactly what it was like to be him. And I'm pretty sure that he could feel the same thing."

"So, all of a sudden a part of you was introduced into his mind?" Alexander asked.

"I think so," Clark said. "It's all way too hard to remember exactly. But I can still feel him." He reached up and touched his temple with his index finger. "Up here. It's almost like we're still connected."

"It enough of you rubbed off on him to make him a momentary hero," Chloe said. "You don't think that enough of him could rub off on you to make you a monster. Do you?"

"Chloe, I've been put under the influence of enough things to know how to shake it off," Clark said. "I may be able to feel Lucas' mind in my head, but I'm not going to turn into him."

"Well," Alexander said. "What do we do now?"

"It doesn't look like we're going home tonight," Chloe said.

The professor shook his head. "This machine isn't going to send anyone anywhere but to an early grave. Your only chance is to use the one back at LuthorCorp."

"And security won't let us in there," Clark said. "Not after the professor had to be escorted out of there yesterday."

"Yeah," Alexander said. "You'd have to be escorted in there by Lionel Luthor himself."

"When do we leave?"

The group looked up at the sound of the new voice and found Lionel Luthor sitting in a wheelchair in the corridor above them and looking down through the hole in the floor. Behind him were a very pale looking Jonathan Kent and his very tired wife. Lana stepped up last of all.

"Mr. Luthor!" Clark said. "You're out of the hospital!"

"The doctors set some bones and bandaged some cuts," Lionel said. "They say that I'll be fine."

The group made there way up to the corridor and they all went into the study. Alexander put his arm around Jonathan.

"I'm sorry that I ran out on you, Dad," he said.

"It's alright son," Jonathan said. "I was in there because I tried to help Clark. It would have been for nothing if you'd let Lucas kill him anyway." When the doctor let us out, we came out to see what had become of the whole mess."

"Clark," Lionel said, pulling the younger man closer to him. "Did you stop him?"

"Alexander did," Clark replied. "If it hadn't been for him Lucas may have killed all of us." Jonathan smiled at his son and patted his shoulder. Lana hugged him and scolded him for doing something so dangerous.

"Where is he now?" Lionel asked.

Clark, Chloe, Alexander, and Hamilton all traded looks. After a moment of silence Clark finally looked down at Lionel.

"It's going to take a few minutes to explain," he said.

It was after midnight before the group made their way out of the mansion. Most of them stood in the driveway, watching as Professor Hamilton helped Lionel into the car. When he was inside, he rolled down his window and beckoned Clark.

"I know that you did what you could," Lionel said. "I must say that I'm happier that he died in the way that he did than if he had been killed trying to hurt more innocent people."

"Mr. Luthor," Hamilton said. "I must remind everyone that it is not certain that your son is dead."

"You said that he was displaced over the multiverse," Lionel said.

"Yes," Hamilton said. "If that is true then it is very possible that he could never be recovered. However, if he is trapped between worlds I may be able to find him. If I have the right equipment, of course."

"Which is something that you'll need to send Clark and Chloe back to their own world," Alexander said.

"Well," Lionel said. "Emil, I think that your work has a great potential. However, I think that it is also very dangerous. I want you send Mr. Kent and Ms. Sullivan home and then I want you to do what you can to retrieve my son. Other than that, there will be no further experiments with meteor rocks at LuthorCorp."

"Mr. Luthor," Chloe said. "What about the Lucas clones in your cellar?"

"Oh, yes," Lionel said.

"You can't destroy them," Chloe said. "They're potentially living beings."

"I'll have them sent to LuthorCorp," Lionel said. "They'll be placed in the most secured area that I have available. Then Professor Hamilton and I will decide what is to be done with them."

Clark stepped forward. "Mr. Luthor," he said. "When I first arrived you tried to kill me." Lionel looked away from him. He was clearly ashamed of his actions. "But even in the span of one day, you've changed. Thank you for helping me."

"You're welcome, Clark," Lionel said. "And I hope that any version of me in any universe has the same potential for change. And if they do, you'll be the one to bring it about."

Then Clark turned to the Kents. "Alexander, you saved my life. And it's good to know that my parents can have such a profound influence over how a person turns out."

"Thanks, Clark," Alexander said. "You take care of yourself."

"You too," Clark replied. He looked at Jonathan and Martha. "I guess it's hardest to say goodbye to you."

"Clark," Jonathan said. "I don't want you blaming yourself for your dad's death. If he's anything like me, then he would gladly die to protect his family from harm. He died doing what I would have done and that's not your fault." Clark hugged him, and he fought back the tears that came with knowing that he would probably never embrace his father again.

"Mr. Luthor," Chloe said. "There is one other thing that you can do for us."

"Name it," Lionel said.

"Don't close the Talon," she replied.

"Done," Lionel said.

Lana smiled at her. "Thank you, Chloe."

They hugged. Then Clark, Chloe, and Professor Hamilton climbed into the car with Lionel and they headed towards Metropolis.

Clark had gotten some dirty looks from the guards as he had stepped into the lobby of LuthorCorp. One of them had started to reach for his taser when he had seen him. Clark had beaten them once without his powers and knew that they would be no match for him now. But he did not have to try it. When Lionel came through the door behind him being pushed by Chloe, the guards relaxed.

"Mr. Luthor," one of the men said as he came around to the other side of the desk. "Are you alright?" He looked at Clark. "We heard that your son tried to kill you."

"Stand down, Mr. James," Lionel said. "As much as I would like to call this boy my son, he is not. My son is gone. Now, if you will excuse us, we have some work to do in Professor Hamilton's lab."

"Yes, sir," the guard said. The group moved to the elevator and stepped inside. Clark looked through the doors with his x-ray vision and saw that they were still staring toward him has they ascended.

"Clark," Hamilton said as he pulled a lead apron from a storage locker in the laboratory and handed it to him. "Do you still have that vial that I gave you?"

"Yeah," Clark said as he tapped the pocket of his jeans. "It's right here."

"Wonderful," Hamilton said. "Remember, you have to get my counterpart to inject you with that right away. It will restore your powers."

"Will this hurt him?" Lionel asked.

"His last crossover nearly killed him," Hamilton said. "But there is no other way to get him home. However, if I charge the machine and activate the beam as quickly as possible, it could limit the exposure that he has to the meteor energy."

Clark and Chloe stood in front of the machine that was used to display the images of other worlds. Chloe was breathing very rapidly.

"We'll be able to go together?" she asked.

"Yes," Hamilton said. "This projector is much more powerful than the one back at the mansion." He switched on the computer. "It's Earth number seventy-five. Correct?"

"Seventy-four," Chloe corrected. Hamilton chuckled. Clark put on the vest and he and Chloe embraced one another. "Are you alright?"

"I will be once I get you home," Clark said. "I hope that I don't have to start going with you to every press conference."

She laughed. "My own personal superhero," she said.

"I'm ready," Hamilton said.

"Goodbye, Clark," Lionel said. "Goodbye, Chloe."

"Goodbye, Mr. Luthor," Clark said. "And thanks, again."

Hamilton pressed a button on the projector and a beam of green light burst out all at once and exploded into a brilliant display around Clark and Chloe. Lionel winced as he heard Clark crying out in agony. The cries faded as did the lights. When Hamilton switched off the machine, they were gone.

Lionel Luthor strode into the fifth floor laboratory at LuthorCorp to find Emil Hamilton looking intently at the computer monitor in front of him. Jimmy Olsen was pacing back and forth on the other side of the room. He had not left since Clark had vanished the night before. Behind him in the elevator was Martha Kent, fidgeting anxiously as she stepped out and stood next to him.

"Hamilton called me just a few minutes ago," Lionel said. "He said that there has been some activity in the dimension that he believes Clark and Chloe have gone."

"What kind of activity?" Martha asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," Lionel said. "Emil!"

Hamilton looked up for a second before turning back to his work. "Mr. Luthor. I didn't expect you so soon."

"I was only a few blocks away when you called," Lionel said. "This is Martha Kent. She is Clark's mother. I found her in the lobby. She said that the guards called up here and were unable to get her access to the lab."

"I, uh," Hamilton stammered. "I didn't want anyone up here without your approval, sir."

"Senator Kent has my approval for anything that she wants," Lionel said. "Remember that in the future."

"Yes, sir," Hamilton said.

"Now," Lionel said. "What's happening?"

"Well," Hamilton said. "I've been getting some readings from the world that I sent Clark to. I believe that someone there is trying to get through to this universe."

"What makes you think that?" Martha asked.

"About two hours ago the beam was activated and then it quickly failed," Hamilton said. "Someone may have tried to cross over and didn't make it."

"Oh, my god," Martha said.

"Hamilton," Lionel said. "You really are a fool. The boy's mother is here, for God's sake!"

"I'm sorry, sir," Hamilton said. "But, there's another fluctuation coming from there now. I think something may be coming through."

Before Hamilton finished speaking there was an explosion in front of the projector. Green light flooded the room and made it impossible to see. The force of the blast erupted outward, shattering Hamilton's machine and his computer. It weakened a bit before it reached the people in the room, but it was still strong enough to knock them off of their feet and flat onto their backs.

Jimmy landed hard, but he was up again in a heartbeat. The light finally subsided and he saw Chloe standing in the midst of where the light had originated. She was trying her best to hold Clark up. He looked as if he had passed out.

"Professor Hamilton!" Chloe was yelling. They all ran to her. Hamilton and Lionel Luthor helped to lay Clark on his back. He was convulsing and there was foam running out of the corner of his mouth. He had blood dripping from his nose and his ears. Chloe reached into Clark's pocket and pulled out a vial filled with a purple liquid. "You have to inject him with this she said."

"What is it?" Hamilton said.

"Just do it!" Chloe screamed.

"Emil," Lionel said. "Listen to her."

Hamilton nodded and took the vial from Chloe. He went to a cabinet that had been smashed open by the force of their entry. He pulled out a syringe and plunged it into the vial, pulling the fluid out of it. Then, he moved back to Clark's side and shoved the needle into his arm. It went in easily and Chloe found herself still surprised that the needle did not break on his skin. He was just as weak as he had been before.

A few seconds after he had been injected, Clark stopped shaking and he opened his eyes. He saw Chloe, his mom, Hamilton, Lionel, and Jimmy all staring down at him.

"Jimmy's here," Clark said. "We made it?"

Chloe smiled. "We made it!" She hugged him and then she hugged Jimmy.

Lionel helped Clark to his feet. He was still a little shaky, but he could feel the strength returning to his body. He knew that once he got out into the sunlight, he would return to normal.

"Well, Clark," Lionel said. "You've been on quite an adventure."

"You have no idea," Clark said. "I saw the potential that some of the people around me have and what they could have been. Some of it was scary. But some of it was really promising."

"I hope you saw something promising in me," Lionel said.

"I did," Clark replied. He put an arm around his mother and made his way toward the elevator along with Jimmy and Chloe.

"Hey, CK," Jimmy said. "I'm sorry that I spazzed out yesterday. You shouldn't have had to put yourself into jeopardy to save my girlfriend."

"I was glad to do it, Jimmy," Clark said. "You would have done the same for me."

Jimmy smiled and they got onto the elevator.

Hamilton turned to Lionel as the others left. "Mr. Luthor, the projector's been destroyed. But do you realize what's happened here today?"

"Yes, I do, Emil," Lionel said. "You've discovered the secret to crossing the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Congratulations."

"Thank you, Mr. Luthor," Hamilton said with a smile.

"You're fired," Lionel said. Hamilton's smile faded.

"What?" he asked.

"Emil, you could have killed a room full of reporters yesterday because you used meteor rocks in your experiments against my orders," Lionel said. "And if it weren't for Clark Kent you probably would have either killed Ms. Sullivan or you would have lost her. That is a liability that LuthorCorp is not ready to undertake. You are relieved of your duties."

"My projects," Hamilton said. "My experiments…"

"All of them are the property of LuthorCorp," Lionel said. "Please don't make me call security to escort you from the building."

Hamilton nodded and walked to the elevator. As he left, Lionel looked at the remnants of the machine before him. He began to roll through his mind to come up with the best replacement to bring the machine back to life.

"That's amazing, Clark," Martha said as she drove back toward Smallville. Clark was sitting next to her while Jimmy and Chloe sat in the back. "You were raised by Lionel Luthor and your father and I adopted Lex? If your father were here, I don't know if he'd believe it."

"I think that he would," Clark said. "You know, he's still alive over there."

"You saw your father?" Martha asked.

Clark nodded. "He looks the same as always."

"That must have been very hard for you," Martha said.

"It was," Clark replied. "But in a way I'm glad of it. He helped me to let go of some of the feelings that I've been carrying around about his death."

"You should have seen Clark, Mrs. Kent," Chloe said. "He was such a hero."

Martha and Clark traded glances. Martha could tell that there would be more to tell when Jimmy was not around.

"Well," Martha said. "I'm just glad to have you both back. I can't tell you how scared I was when I heard what had happened."

"You should have been there when that thing zapped Chloe," Jimmy said. "That was scary. But, it is good to have you guys back."

"It's good to be back," Chloe said.

"Yeah," Clark replied. "There's no place like home."

End of chapter fifteen.


	16. Epilogue

Epilogue

There was no light. If there had been, he would not have been able to see it. He had no eyes to see with. His body was gone. Only his mind existed now. He was floating, but he could not sense where he was. He was moving, but he felt no air rushing his face to tell how fast he was going. And he had no idea as to where he was going.

He just was.

His cells and his DNA, the very essence of who he was had been scattered. He spanned across the entire expanse of every dimension that existed. And yet, he occupied no world at once. He could see what was happening in all of them. There were billions of Clarks and Chloes and Lionels. But there were just as many Lucases. He could see them all. He could hear them all.

He was Lucas Luthor. At least he used to be. Part of him had now become Clark Kent. He was a different person. He still had hatred in his heart, but there was also compassion. He wanted to kill, but he wanted to be a savior. He was torn.

He could sense his own cells. He knew where each one of them were. And after a while, he found that he could control each of them individually. One cell found another and they attached to each other. Then they would find more and then collect them.

I would take time, but he would come together again. Then, he would find a way back.

What he would do then was anyone's guess.

Hamilton got up from his computer and took one last look at the clone of Lucas that he had been working with all evening. Lionel Luthor had been here earlier to be sure that they had been secured. He had intended on finding a way to destroy them humanely. But Hamilton was not about to allow his creations to be done away with so crassly.

He punched a series of codes into his computer and the clone opened its eyes. He got up and stepped in front of it.

"Hello, Son," he said.

The clone looked at him and opened its mouth. Its voice was eerily like Lucas', but with an almost robotic echo.

"Hello, Father," it said. Then it ripped its hand out of the shackle that held it and grabbed Hamilton by his throat, lifting him from the floor. "I'm awake!"

End of Elseworlds: Book One

I just wanted to add this epilogue to give you an idea of some of the things that will be coming in book two. Although, I will admit that book two may not becoming right away. If I don't make you wait for it, you'll never stay addicted.

But don't worry. I have other Smallville fan fiction that is forthcoming. I have ideas of ways for Clark to meet other heroes that he will have future relationships with. I may even have him meeting up with Waverider. I thought that would be an interesting concept. What if Waverider looked into Clark's future and saw about ten years down the road when Clark finally moves to Metropolis and first dons the old red and blue?

Anyway, I hope Elseworlds: Book One turned out as good as you expected. I almost killed Alexander. It had been my intention of having Alexander give his life to save Clark from the very beginning. But then my fingers went and killed alternate Chloe and alternate Lois. I didn't want to kill everyone in the mirror universe. Who would come back for the sequel?

I'll see you guys. Keep reviewing and I'll keep writing. Now I'm going to take a little time to read some of your stuff and review it. And I want to read some of the stuff you've recommended.

Stay safe!

Kal-El2K7


End file.
